Tag Archives: European leaders

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. Is it what remains underexplored is what convinces audiences of their leaders’ competence, caring, and trustworthiness.

17 Friday May 2019

Posted by in Elections/ Voting, European Elections 2019, European Elections., European Union.

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( An fifteen European Election read|) Image associée

Politics these days is an ugly game of lies and responsibilities.

It is said that if you want the best and brightest people to represent you in politics you can only attract them by offering lucrative remuneration.

Almost a third of MEPs have second jobs or outside income, according to Transparency International, which is calling on MEPs to be obliged to provide more detail about their earnings and employers.

Why?

Because these days, politics attracts career professional politicians who are more likely to lien their own pockets. Take two prime examples-  The Nigel Farage’s and Donal Trumps of this world.

It is us that cast the votes and it is us that determine that leaders have certain traits or skills.

However, in this world of data algorithms and Social Media Platforms perhaps this no longer holds true rather what really matters is the competencies that are projected on to leaders by their authorizing environment. In other words, the key to leading is to mobilize others toward the prescribed course of action to address the identified problems.

But only identifying a problem and formulating a solution is not enough if people do not act upon it. We witness this every day with Brexit and Climate change.

So let’s look at CREDIBILITY AS A SOURCE OF POLITICAL CAPITAL:

Political capital refers to citizen feelings about the political regime as a whole, not just about the party or coalition which is currently incumbent.

Or is political capital not linked to structural, system characteristics but to a quality associated with individual citizens.

Or is the political capital of global leaders their ‘ability to use
power or authority to gain the support of constituents in a socially effective way.

Or is political capital just a commodity that professional
politicians need. An asset that leaders own.

However, it should not be forgotten that without an audience, without citizens or constituents, there would be no (political) leadership.

In other words: leadership is relational.

Political capital can thus relate first of all to the confidence and legitimacy one bestows upon political institutions.

To get things done a politician must have political capital.

To be able to take the necessary but perhaps unpopular decisions, and to survive taking them as well, leaders need political capital.

This can be summed up in three main forms: skills, relations and reputation.

How political leaders perform that some of them are attributed to credibility whereas others are not.

Is it up to audiences to attribute credibility to political leaders?

After all, political capital is a form of credit founded on credence.

If people don’t believe in the messenger, they won’t believe the message. Political leaders need to be credible not like Trump or Farage.

It is hard to believe that only appearing to have – for example – knowledge of the economy or Brexit without actually having a clue can be considered a political resource.

Unfortunately, Communication between politics and society is to a large extent mediated:

Where in British politics is the counter to the resentment and the populism—along with the real, earned dismay at the incompetence of Parliament when it comes to Brexit?

Where is the logic of a USA president that denies climate change, that’s starting a trade war with China and looking for a war against Iran, that thinks rape is an ok weapon of war?

Its time we their employers evaluate their performance to see if we are getting our money worth.

In the European Union, it is time to vet MEP spending, replacing the current MEP-led system.

There are several ways of looking at government performance.

Broadly speaking, the objective of governments is to maximise

their citizens’ welfare.

The ideal way to assess government performance would be to measure all the outputs that government produces or outcomes that it achieves, and compare these with the money it spends and resources it uses to assess its efficiency and productivity.

This isn’t possible, given how difficult it is to define and measure many of the outputs of government. A proxy for performance is whether departments are using technologies and working practices which are believed to be productivity-enhancing.

If information is power, then performance measurement is surely tightly linked to the creation and use of power.

If the whole chain is considered, it is possible to better analyse why performance is being measured, how and by whom, what is seen to be of value, what is being gained and what is being lost, and who is benefitting and losing from this.

However quantified measures lead to measurement becoming more technical, costly and politically controlled.

What is needed is a blend of political purpose and rationality.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of POLITICAL CAPITAL"

This form of measurement cannot be demanded by force but needs to be gained through persuasion and involvement.

How can we achieve this?

There is also potential for directed collaboration to engender a more realistic-political approach to performance measurement, and allow it to become more critical, iterative and reflective.

Citizens bonds could and would counteract the plunder of Democracy by Data algorithms that make a profit though Hedge funds  (The Brexit-supporting hedge fund manager Crispin Odey made £220 million and was filmed by a BBC documentary crew saying: “The morning has gold in its mouth.” ).

Their performance would measure governments programmes by their return on investment.

BUILDING TRUST BETWEEN THE POLITICIANS AND THE TAXPAYER THUS CREATING REAL POLITICAL CAPITAL:

Ultimately, these Bonds can be distilled into power in its purest form.

You must remember that without the man on the streets, politics is a zero-sum game. Without people, the pursuit of power is meaningless.

Around the world with climate change governments are dancing with disasters.

Despite the fiscal constraints of the day, the rationale and the resources can be found – if the political will is there.

To bolster political capital it is not tax, tax and more taxes which leads to popularism.

Let us all invest in the future. THERE IS NO POLITICAL CAPITAL IN Brexit.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of POLITICAL CAPITAL"

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHAT EFFECTS IF ANY SHOULD BREXIT HAVE ON THE EUROPEAN ELECTIONS IN MARCH.

13 Sunday Jan 2019

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., England EU Referendum IN or Out., European Union., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., Reality., Social Media, The common good., The Euro, Transition period or Implication period., Unanswered Questions., What needs to change in European Union.

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( Twelve-minute read)

The Brexit referendum has and is demonstrating that the EU is not an irrevocable project.

It is now an internal power struggle while the EU _was_ an attempt to ensure peace and prosperity over the west part of the continent instead of the “costly” wars and colonial economics.

However, as the days go bye it is becoming more and more apparent that the EU is not for the people of Europe as a whole.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of european union elections"

Brexit for all its reasons is an example that is now shining a light on the forthcoming European Elections. Especially on the pros and cons of is there a future as separated national states or the Union.

Why?

Because Brexit’s main players have failed to comprehend the true significance of the European Union, bringer of peace.

Probably they intentionally refused to understand it in order to carry forth their destructive policies without qualms, hoping to reap the fruits in national elections.

But what is actually happening is that it is bringing England and their voters into a state of isolation, coupled with political and economic problems that are currently afflicting the United Kingdom it might be no longer a Union.

There is no doubting that Brexit will negatively affect the European Union, and its Member States, and its citizens, but the EU will be compensated by having gotten rid of a reluctant member that constantly hindered every effort aimed at the necessary, logical development of the integration process.

This is no fault of the in or out voters, rather it is playing out the falsehoods spread by Social media that appeal to nationalism rules & will, which in the current set up of the European Union will trump the forced solidarity of Brussels. 

No one can “force solidarity” upon you. Nor can a currency forge deeper integration. 

Only collective suicide can do so.

So are the up and coming elections going to deeper disunity than unity?

The results of the European elections will constitute the grounds for the renewal of EU institutions and of its leadership. It then remains to be seen to what extent Europeans would have a political interest in mitigating the psychological impact of this Brexit chaos on European citizens.

At the end of all this madness, what is the EU going to look like?

On May 23 to 26 the citizens of 27 Member States will be called to renew the European Parliament. Then it is the turn of the formation of the new EU Commission. A busy timetable marked by growing anti-European movements and by the possibility of citizens’ mobilization.

If England requests an extension of article 50 it will extend into the period of Europes own elections thus linking the absurd ongoing spectacle in the British Parliament- which will lead to all of us witnessing the consequences of anti-European, nationalistic propaganda based on lies and slander against the European project.

So Europe will be in a quandary.

It cannot be seen unwilling to offer an extension, nor can it risk a Brexit bush fire by an extension of  Article 50 over four months. 

The current crisis that Europeans are both observing and undergoing is nothing but the readjustment of a project that no longer serves the needs of the day properly, and therefore needs renovation.

The last thing it needs is squabbling noncooperative English second peoples referendum or general election influencing its own elections which will have more than ample pitfalls of their own. 

The Union is a rule-based union > if it is perceived to modify its rules without open democratic transparency it can only blame itself for its disintegration.

The Union might be only sixty odd years old but its history of breaking rules.

A confederation is based on trickle-down authority. The ultimate power lies in the individual states. It has no effective powers to prevent its own member states from violating its core values of respect for democracy, fundamental rights, and the rule of law.

Take Hungary, for example. Here is a member state casually flouting basic democratic norms and human rights, swiftly evolving into an authoritarian nightmare, with absolutely no meaningful consequences. The country’s parliament has not just passed a law making claims for asylum almost impossible:

Take Poland, for example. Authoritarian Poland is making an utter mockery of the EU’s stated commitment to democracy and human rights.

Defining appropriate institutions to regulate and mediate between economic and social forces is a global and not just European challenge, but its achievement may appear too far out of reach.

The EU is buffeted by multiple crises, from Brexit to the assumption of power of a Eurosceptic Italian government.

But its acceptance of its own member states succumbing to authoritarianism may prove its greatest existential threat of all.

One of the biggest problems with the EU is not how the politicians are “elected”, but how can you get rid of them when they fail to perform.

For many reasons, (addressed in previous posts) I think the EU project is fundamentally flawed.  That those who “run” the EU are not subjected to a democratic election is scandalous.

Integration is what has given Europe its strength in economic globalization, and this integration will play a huge part in Europe’s survival in the age of political globalization. They cannot be tarnished by concession to England just for the sake of the Market.

Closer integration will have to include services but also the huge market for training and skills. It will comprise an energy union, just as it will have to comprise a proper “market” for people. This market will include not just the now-endangered EU principle of free movement in the EU. It will also include its flip side, a properly regulated shared “market” for immigrants.

What seems impossible today will have to come, no matter how much nationalist sentiments stand against it.

The EU serves a purpose, and its workings and its setup will have to be adapted as this purpose changes. Again and again.

How can this be achieved?

Fundamentally, the EU either serves the needs of the day or it gets into a crisis.

A more open decision-making process might have a positive effect on public interest in democracy at the EU level but it will not unity because it is becoming more and more evident that the single market with all its rules is more important than the citizens.

The dominant dividing line of the new parliament will become a contest between politicians who want to find common EU-level solutions to current challenges and those who favour safeguarding and reaffirming national sovereignty.

So I predict a Europe in which values will be handled closer to the lowest common denominator than to the great ideals that Europe wants to stand for.

This will be a source of never-ending tension, but it will prove less costly than becoming divided over maximalist morals only to lose out in the harsh world of political globalization.

The peoples of Europe will no longer integrate because they feel love for the idea of an integrated Europe—if ever they did. Integration will come only when the pain is really massive. And it is massive only in some policy fields, not in all. And it will remain so until the European Union affords a direct opportunity to its citizens to invest in EU that brings a reward with that investment. ( See the previous Post)

The politics of fear by building electoral platforms based on liberal principles, pointing out the big challenges surrounding technology and climate change, and showing that migration is just one issue among many.

There is no real hope for EU federalists because the Union relies on a global order that the Europeans are unable to guarantee. The direction of integration is more diffuse now than in the past.

However, the quest for political order on a planet that has outgrown its merely regional structure might have the chance to make a difference.

So with the European elections this time it’s not enough to hope for a better future: this time each and every one of us must take responsibility for it too.

Artificial intelligence has been confined to the lab for so long that it is hard sometimes to recognise that it is now an actual technology that we use without thinking. The EU is right to try to harness it.

Voting, on the other hand, has not been around for a long time, it now needs more thinking than ever.

After a woeful five years, this is perhaps last chance for the EU to prove it can regain the initiative. The stakes have never been higher, and the EU needs someone who is confident, can communicate and represents the people.

The EU needs a serious person at the helm, and it cannot afford to leave the choice to an obscure process that has so far failed to find the best person for the job.

The ‘technocratic’ rhetoric of economists and central bankers convinced most people that there is no feasible alternative to (financial) market logic, to fiscal austerity, low wages, flexible labour markets and independent central banks.

This way, establishment economics has constrained (and continues to constrain) political choices, stripping electorates of their autonomy in political and moral judgement.

This is a dangerous game since the only way disenfranchised electorates can express their anger, anxiety and powerlessness is by choosing self-defined. Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of european fascism"

The tragedy of Brexit powered by Farage & all doesn’t have any real solutions.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WITH THE FORTHCOMING EUROPEAN ELECTIONS IS IT NOT TIME FOR THE EU COMMISSION TO REXAMINE ITS SELF.

18 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., Communication., Democracy, European Commission., European Union., Humanity., Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values., The common good., Unanswered Questions., What needs to change in European Union.

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(Six-minute read)

While the UK is wholly focused on Brexit negotiations, yesterday the 12th Sept Jean- Claude Junker gave his state of the Union speech.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of jean claude juncker"

It may have been a thoughtful and reflective speech, accompanied by concrete initiatives on trade, investment screening, cybersecurity, industry, and data IT DID LITTLE TO ADDRESS the wave of populist protest that can yet inflict serious damage on Europe.

The rise of populist or far-right parties in Germany, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Denmark and elsewhere threaten not only the stability of individual governments, but the cohesion of Europe itself, and its most sacred values of democracy and freedom.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures eu commission"

Already we can see that the EU is practically powerless to resist the erosion of civil liberties and the rule of law in eastern Europe, while the Conte-Salvini administration in Rome promises even more serious trouble on migration and the single currency.

Mr. Juncker recognized these challenges but had few immediate proposals to turn the populist tide nor did he offer much evidence that the commission has all the answers.

These are not times for any European leader to talk airily about further losses of national power and sovereignty. The next commission president need not be a Eurosceptic – an absurd notion anyway – but he or she will need, somehow, to bring Europe closer to its disaffected citizens. The EU is not a sovereign nation. It can’t have a president, nor can it grant citizenship.

It’s only an organization, deluded enough to think it’s a country.

The social balance of the EU and the EU nations is crucial for the EU future. The effects of the economic and financial crisis are still causing great hardship in many parts of Europe.

If the commission is to learn anything from the departure of the UK it must improve the public perception of the Union.

We will and are living in a Union of unemployed people, many of them young people who feel sidelined. Until this situation has changed, it must be the number one concern,  to grant the Uk any agreement that is seeing as better than what exists for its remaining members will put the final nail in the coffin.

The UK is and was a hypocritical member seeking to get benefits for its businesses whilst, all too often, leaving its citizens out of the equation.

Brexit is inevitable. It is much too late to cancel Brexit.

The uncertainty about the future relationship is entirely due to the UK’s clueless incompetence and serial backtracking on previously agreed on things which PM May had SIGNED under.

The Brexit mess is 100% made in the UK.

At a time when and the desire to preserve access to EU capital for its banks, asset managers and insurers, many in the UK at least perceive the Commission’s proposed changes to strengthen rules around third country access as a direct attempt to ensure that the UK does not engage in a regulatory race to the bottom, once outside the EU.

THERE IS NO AGREEMENT TRADE OR OTHERWISE THAT A NEW PRIME MINISTER WILL NOT TRY TO CHANGE.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "PICTURES OF THE EU IN THE FUTURE"

It will fall to Mr. Juncker’s successor, from next summer, to lead Europe away from its real and present dangers Of falling into the nationalistic fairy traps.

The EU has for way too long been dominated by an international corporate capital much better at international cooperation than the civil society. In Brussels, the corporate business lobby is much better organized than small business, workers unions, and civil society movements.

HOWEVER, WE ARE STILL ON A LEARNING CURVE WITH THE EUROPEAN UNION.

In conclusion:

One of the greatest challenges to the EU is that it does not stand still for long, with social media and the advance of technology in order to stay standing it must involve its citizens with an equal share of its benefits both financial and otherwise.

To give Europeans a working interest in the Union here is a suggestion that could go a long way in achieving an active engagement of its citizens in its future development.

WHY NOT INTRODUCE A EUROPEAN TREASURY BOND.

EVERYONE CAN BE AFFORDED AN OPPORTUNITY TO INVEST IN ITS FUTURE.

20,000 new border guards to police the EU’s Mediterranean borders by 2020 is too late.

THE JURY IS STILL OUT ON THE OVERALL PERFORMANCE OF THE JCJ COMMISSION.

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THE BEADY EYES: 2017 WILL BE THE YEAR WHEN DEMOCRACY WILL BE UNDER ATTACK FROM ENTRENCHED POWER MORE THAN EVER.

20 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Brexit., Capitalism, Climate Change., European Commission., European Union., Humanity., Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Politics., Social Media., Sustaniability, Technology, The Future, The Internet., The New year 2017, The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations.

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As Digital technologies and digital communications are permeating every aspect of life we seem to be living in both a hopeful but also difficult times.

The instinctive tendency to categorise the world into “us”and “them” is becoming more and more difficult to overcome but traditional power structures are changing.

Current institutions and political systems are out of date.

People are taking matters into their own hands and are taking the initiative to organise public affairs themselves. On the one hand, this is because they are losing confidence in politics; and on the other hand, it is because some issues are simply not being dealt with by governments any more. Afficher l'image d'origine

Thanks to the internet, artificial intelligence, google, facebook, twitter, globalisation, and or inability to plan for the long term future the relations between culture and power IS BREAKING DOWN world wide.

The new terrain of global governance by artificial intelligence is making up its own rules on the fly or going about its activities without even any regard for rules of procedure.

It is amply clear by now that the so-called digital divide cannot be bridged through technological means alone, as it must be understood within broader systems of entrenched social and economic exclusion.

It is then timely for a broader range of other social groups, particularly those most adversely affected by globalisation, to re-think how they believe global governance should work.

Our present global structure of patriarchy and capitalist greed with all its connectivity is still a long way off establishing a new world with justice and freedom at its core.

For example:

The Syrian Civil war precipitated by drought in the region. The Iraq, the Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan

Nuclear power plants require grid-tied electricity, cooling water and people getting paychecks. Without all these, they melt down, thus immersing all life on earth in ionizing radiation.

1 in 3 women across the planet will be beaten or raped during her lifetime.

That’s ONE BILLION WOMEN AND GIRLS.

We’re driving to extinction at least 150 species each day.

There’s more. Much more. The violence of poverty, racial violence, gender violence, violence caused by corruption, occupation and aggression, violence caused by environmental disasters, climate change and environmental plunder.

We seem to be living as if there is no future but the one we are creating.

There is nothing guaranteed but our willingness to live as pioneers of a new consciousness and way.

The past five or six years have seen an explosion of political initiatives around the globe in which tech-minded actors of various kinds (including geeks, hackers, bloggers, tech journalists, digital rights lawyers, and Pirate politicians) have played leading parts.

(Not forgetting capitalist greed in all its forms.)

There is a terrible irony in the assumption that we can transcend our parochial tendencies with artificial intelligence.

There is growing public awareness of the concentration of economic power in the world. The richest 85 people in the world, who could fit onto a single double-decker bus, have just as much wealth as the poorest half of world.

Absolute universalism, is impossible. Morality cannot be everywhere at once.

So culture and power is breaking down.

Perhaps it is time to have a data-based approach and ranking of universal values.

This will not work.

Because culture is a key arena for struggles and has provided dynamism and force to the most effective social movements; and one could argue is the most important area for work if we are to really embed and sustain transformative practices in our communities and states over the long-term.

We are fast approaching foregoing the unrealistic concern of respecting different cultures with their moral diversity at any cost because of the economic exploitation globally enforced by imperialist and capitalist states that place profit over people.

We must start thinking of what a post-venture capitalism age of socio-technical innovation might look like, and how it could contribute to democratic renewal in different cultural contexts.

Digital rights are not only human rights, as we often hear in net freedom circles: digital rights are social rights.

Politics, or rather political parties, seem to have an inherent tendency to close in on themselves – maybe in search of traditional forms of certainty, and linked to this predictability and with it a controlling, monopolistic conception of agency.

Its back to I am alright Jack.

The Election of Donald Trump, the English referendum on in or out European Union are shining examples.Afficher l'image d'origine

Afficher l'image d'origineBoth driven by genuine and false concerns. Both altering millions of Europeans to the way Europe is run and to how the USA                                     might be run.

Both models of politics have been based on nation-specific political parties. Both with consensus-centred policies that have reproduced the crisis now faces in 2017 in the United states which will push Europe into a path that will lead to disintegration with each needing to take a new look at the current rules of engagement in international affairs.

Europe can only work if we all work for unity and commonality, and forget the rivalry between competences and institutions. Europeans want common decisions followed by swift and efficient implementation.

At the moment it is viewed as a cartel:

The Eurozone may be supremely powerful as an entity but where no one is in control.

The whole Euro currency project disempower almost every player that has anything to do with democratic legitimacy. It created a monetary union that was designed to fail and which guaranteed untold hardship for the peoples of Europe. ( see previous post)

The nation-state is dead and democracy in the EU has been replaced by a toxic algorithmic depoliticisation that, if it is not confronted, will lead to depression, disintegration and possibly war.

While politics (the ability to decide which things ought to be done) is confined to the level of the nation-state, power (the ability to get things done) has shifted to a supra-national level.

The concept of sovereignty doesn’t change, but the ways it is applied to multi-ethnic and multi-jurisdictional areas like Europe has to be rethought.

There is no point in a slew of treaties, organisations and agencies that form the scaffolding of the emerging global governance structure regulating and superintending everything from nuclear weapons to the fishing of halibut, and all of them embody election less intergovernmentalism.

What European citizens need much more is that someone governs. That someone responds to the challenges of our time.

The Council is the heart of the problem.

The Council operates as a senate-like legislative chamber, yet there are no elections to this body. It is as if you were permitted to vote for your local MP, but there were never any general elections.

Unless institutional bodies can be censured or dismissed as a body by one common parliament, you don’t have sovereign democracy. So that should be the objective in Europe.

The sovereignty of parliaments has been dissolved by the Eurozone and the Eurogroup; the capacity to fulfil one’s mandate at the level of the nation-state has been eradicated and therefore any manifestos addressed to citizens of a particular member state become theoretical exercises.

If we want a Commission that responds to the needs of the real world, we should encourage Commissioners to seek the necessary rendez-vous with democracy.

But a vision alone will not suffice.Afficher l'image d'origine

(Each is a famous European then whose reach extended much further than their time or their geography, and helped to shape the world we live in today.)

The European Union was never meant to be the beginning of a republic or a democracy where ‘we, the people of Europe’ rule the roost.

When democracy produces what the establishment likes to hear then democracy is not a threat, but when it produces anti-establishment forces and demands, that’s when democracy becomes a threat.

The left has for decades, perhaps hundreds of years, argued that one day, global democracy would be achieved, but until now this has always been something for the far-off future, an abstract dream.

In the era of globalisation, the steady removal of decision-making from democratic chambers by EU elites is serving as a blueprint for post-democratic governance around the world.

The question is how can we harness the discontent it is creating?

Gone is the elites view that elections cannot be allowed to change established economic policy. In other words, that democracy is fine as long as it does not threaten to change anything!

The network of post-democratic intergovernmental structures must be replaced with true global democracy.

If not achieved we will have disintegration and a bleak future.

The central question of the debate will be how to share power, build alliances and establish not only a genuine dialogue, but an equitable distribution of responsibilities between the State, market and ‘community’ at the local, national and European level.

Most of all, at a time when the world seem beset by multiple crises and the disturbing rise of reactionary forces, it seems apt to remember what Antonio Gramsci once wrote: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new is yet to be born. And in the interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

How ultimately can social movements assert their own power through cultural forms to reject the dangerous symptoms of morbidity and bring the new into being?

What role has the technology industry played in reinforcing power or confronting power?

How has the concentrated power in the ‘Silicon Valleys’ of the world used cultural exchange and shaped culture to further increase their power – and the power of other elites?

How can we build a culture that reinforces values of the commons, solidarity, and harmony with nature?

With what can we replace the legal, political and international processes that have facilitated this power grab. Rather than an ideology that has been designed to benefit certain interests.

Cultural hegemony has also sustained powerful structures from the military through to the banking sector. However, power only becomes hegemonic when it is reinforced continuously through cultural processes that make the exercise of power seem ‘natural’ and irreversible.

The idea you can have the Single Market without political union clashes with the political reality that the only way to have free trade these days is by having common legislation on patents, industry standards, competition rules etc.

Now is the time to begin discussing what global democracy would look like concretely and to start to build it. The network of post-democratic intergovernmental structures must be replaced with true global democracy.

We could start with the United Nations. It has more than 30 affiliated organizations — known as programs, funds, and specialized agencies — with their own membership, leadership, and budget processes. (see previous posts)Afficher l'image d'origine

After World War II, the most powerful governments created the UN Security Council with special seats for themselves.

The option is to rebuild the UN system, giving economic, environmental, and social decision-making the same legal mandatory status as decision-making in the Security Council, so that multilateralism could govern globalisation;

The innovations, enhanced by the new information and communication technologies, of the new movements (culturally rooted in the 1960s’ break of the historic bond between knowledge and authority), has been an ability, creatively to deal with uncertainty, to let go of control without losing the possibility of collaborative agency on the basis of shared principles and a broadly agreed purpose.

It does not matter how wealthy, successful, or famous one has been on earth.  All the money and prestige in the world will be useless on your departure.

Merry Christmas.

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT THE FUTURE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION.

27 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by in England EU Referendum IN or Out., European Commission., European Union., Politics., Unanswered Questions.

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( A seven Minute read)

The Post aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the context of the European Union in the 21st century. 

Instead of a core group of like-minded countries coming together to embrace closer integration, one country is pulling way, opening the door for others to do the same. 

The question is whether the U.K. would remain sanguine about a more tightly integrated EU once it became a reality or see it as a threat.

Afficher l'image d'origine

The question of the aims, depth and institutional implications of the integration process has become far more pressing now that England has vote to leave.

Nobody would seriously argue that the EU doesn’t need to evolve in order to survive, but Europe is again inching toward the two-speed reality.Afficher l'image d'origineWe all know that Artificial Intelligence, Climate Change, Current Wars, along with a host of other Scientific advancements are not only changing the World but the way we live.

This crisis has also created an opportunity to re-examine the foundations of the European economic and social model and to develop them further. Patching and mending only makes the situation worse.

The crisis gives us the opportunity to rethink the European Union for the 21st century. If the Union fails, Europe will soon be reduced to a shadow of its former historical self.

The current debate about the future of Europe and the European Union has revealed a conflict of interpretation.

It suffers from a lack of creativity. For the most part it is characterized by generalized aspirations – “more Europe”, “genuine EMU” – which are too abstract to contribute usefully to an informed argument about the future direction of the EU.

While there is  a “perfectly credible” case for a second EU referendum, (if the British people decide that, having seen what it means, the pain gain cost-benefit analysis doesn’t stack up) it appears that the EU is making  no attempt to offer Reforms that would reverse the English electrical decision.   “There is no idea what Brexit really means,” The vote to withdraw is not irrevocable.

It must base its offer to England on an inclusive and positive vision of the UK’s role in a reformed EU.

Perhaps it is because the UK now accounts for less than 1 per cent of the world’s population and less than 3 per cent of global income (GDP). This is no time to revert to Little England and I have not heard to date any good alternatives to membership.

One way or the other just what is the future of the European Union?

Constructive engagement is vital when Europe confronts threats from Islamist extremism, migration, Russian aggrandisement and climate change. These can only be tackled collectively .

The fundamental question is whether Brexit will strengthen the integration among the remaining 27 members or throw the EU into a kind of paralysis wondering what has gone wrong and motivated Britain to leave.

If an unreformed Europe, threatened by social decline, continues along its present path, it risks becoming an elite project that benefits only a minority at the expense of the majority.

It needs effective action, but also truly democratic. It must chart a course for a European Union built on democracy, solidarity and justice.

Many people feel that they have little or no influence on the conditions that govern European policy-making. Participation in the last European elections fell to 43% of eligible voters. But the seemingly general disinterest in Europe only reflects the lack of confidence that Europe’s citizens have in the power of the European Parliament to change things.

Now there is a young generation growing up in Europe without prospects, for whom the European promise has not been redeemed, and who are losing faith in a European solution to the crisis. Also many people no longer realize what they owe to peace in Europe, the common market and open borders.

The EU today is no longer synonymous with growing prosperity, rising incomes, more jobs and greater security. In the short-term the drift towards break-up must be halted, because it is leading us in the wrong direction and making long-term solutions impossible.

When contemplating the future process of integration we must be prepared to jettison prejudices and reservations, but also any harmonistic illusions.

For me the Future of the EU is about is all about shaping perceptions.

When you get right down to it, the European Union is simply the system we’ve built to agree how to handle issues that affect us all.

The EU is far from perfect, but if it needs fixing, it should be fixed, not dismantled.

As troubled as Europe is, reform is an ongoing process, not a one-off event.

Logically it is not difficult to grasp that as industrialization fades away and globalization crowds out the nation state, the political engineering to frame industrialization loses its luster. Nowadays the nation-state is squeezed between on the one hand globalization and on the other hand people’s wish to be closer to the decision-making of relevance of their daily life such as the environment, education, health.

The emphasis must be to move away from Independent economic growth, individual cultural identity, to a shared Union.  Solidarity, benevolence, and cohesion are still there but if Union shows any weakness in its forthcoming Brexit negotiations we will see a knock on effects.

This is, however, only the tip of the iceberg.

Below lurks the challenge of living up to its fundamental values confronted with the combination of demography, migrants/refugees, search for an economic and a social model that serves all.

The key invention of pooling sovereignty has weathered the test of time, but most of the remaining principles need retooling or to be replaced by new principles intercepting changes and new trends.

None of this can be achieved without a major shift to transparency whether England leaves or stays. It can only be achieved with reform. With a new model — commitment to the goal of ‘an ever closer union among the people’s of Europe’.

It does not necessarily imply the disappearance of nation-states only their status and influence will be curbed and power transferred either ‘upwards’ to a changed EU or ‘downwards’ to regions or other local communities.

A multilayered political system will emerge.

Either you are member of the EU, committed to solidarity, coherence, common decision-making, and common policies or you are not.

It must link innovation, qualitative growth and less use of resources to make the EU more competitive by tapping into the vast global market for new industries reaping the benefit of spinoffs, and delivering a better environment for citizens.

It must find a way for the Euro to reflect the individuality economies of its members.

Unless this is done the risk that the system cracks are high and the responsibility for letting this happen rests with Europe and the US. Unless the US and Europe can find common ground the prospect of chaos and infighting is too high for comfort.

The partnership albeit still existing at least on paper has slipped down the list of priorities with the Election of Mr D Trump.

The disturbing factor is the absence of confronting the issues among European politicians and Europeans buying into populism.

EU membership needs to take account of the changing geopolitical environment, the new and growing threats to all EU Member States.

North Africa poses a potential problem with its high population combined with low growth per capita and behind the curtain millions of people from countries south of Sahara look to Europe as the savior.

The prospect of seeing EU external border extended to Syria and Iran with the threat of Turkey opens its european gates to immigrants if it is going to be a member is produces nervousness among Europeans.

It must offer the Uk some key reforms in return for a rerun of the recent referendum.

A vote to remain in the EU, on the back of the renegotiation, could thus allow the UK to take the lead in arguing for a more flexible, dynamic and multi-layered EU in which all Member States, not just the UK would have an interest.

It must create more with less, deliver greater value with less input, using resources in a sustainable way, while minimizing waste and environmental impact. For this strategy, protection of the environment and resource efficiency is vital to its continuation.

It must still works as a problem grinder when a member state tables a problem asking for help. But with one proviso: to share benefits and burdens and not just scraping a lot of money together irrespective of repercussions on the EU or other member states.

Freedom and self-determination will only be possible in the future if these countries and their citizens are prepared to accept a greater degree of responsibility for each other than in the past. If they can be persuaded of this, then the European idea can regain its appeal for future generations and become the foundation on which to build a new, united Europe for the 21st century.

It must create a sufficiently strong increase in living standards to compensate for loss of cultural identity.

Things are no longer what they used to be. If members do not feel committed to a common course they will consider withdrawal.

To do so, the European Parliament should be made more representative, but by increasing the role of citizens and national parliamentarians in the EU structures the EU can be made more open to bottom-up influence.

Multiple levels of engagement should be created so as to give citizens the maximum capability to engage with the EU’s structures. Such a structure would not be perfect. No democratic structure is. But it remains the best way of creating a more democratic European Union.

These problems must be tackled alongside attempts to stabilise economic growth. This can only be done by political leaders genuinely reforming.

The euro zone will not be immune from England’s exit shock and other members, goaded by a belligerent far right, may seek to trigger exit votes. Tensions appear to be spreading throughout Europe. We see far-right movements in countries like Italy, France, Austria and Germany, and worrying signs of racially driven attacks.

In today’s globalized world, where emerging nations such as India, China, Brazil and others are getting ready to shape the political, economic and social destinies of our planet alongside the USA, and to some extent in competition with it, the nations of Europe, which are very small by comparison, can only safeguard their political self-determination, their prosperity and their social achievements by joining forces and standing together on all the key issues. That will require a new step towards European unification, and a strengthening of the capacity of the European Union and its members to take effective action at every level.

Disengagement turned into anger.

For years the bloc has lurched from one crisis to the next, promising time and again to heed the growing mistrust of its 500 million citizens, only to return to the business of internal squabbling as another emergency emerges on the continent.

If the EU is truly a democracy then the best way of closing the gap between citizens and institutions is to empower the people.

To the many of whom see the bloc less as a utopian project and more as a means to an end.

The EU is not going away, however it is time to – Reform or die!Afficher l'image d'origine

There are now 751 MEPs in the European Parliament. 

The European Parliament’s budget for 2015 is €1.795 billion. The general breakdown is:
34% – staff, interpretation and translation costs
23% – MEPs’ expenses covering salaries, travel, offices and staff
12% – buildings
25% – information policy, IT, telecommunications
6% – political group activities

The EU’s national governments unanimously decided in 1992 to fix permanently the seat of the EU institutions. The official seat and venue for most of the plenary sessions is Strasbourg, Parliamentary Committees and Political Group meetings are held in Brussels and administrative staff are based in Luxembourg. Any change to this current system would need to be part of a new treaty and unanimously agreed by all Member States.

Here is the first reform;

Stop ripping off the taxpayer, with the  EU Parliament ‘travelling circus’.  It’s an outright waste of money, unjustifiable to the European taxpayer, and its wrong.

Between 3,000 and 4,000 people, among them roughly 800 MEPs, their assistants, employees and interpreters move 400 kilometres from Brussels to Strasbourg. Their workspaces are empty for 317 days per year.

It costs taxpayers an estimated €200 million per year.

Just send the bill to M Hollande who can pass it on to the French taxpayer, annually and inflation adjusted. Everyone in France will then be less unhappy about this charade.

An After thought:

Coming up with a unified foreign policy is perhaps the E.U’s greatest challenge of all for its future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S : WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

28 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by in European Union., Humanity., Life., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World

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( Five minute read:)

How often have you heard this question.

It is mostly posed with a form of some aggression.

Not so here.

SO I SUPPOSE THE BEST PLACE TO START WITH THIS POST IS WITH WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, AS YOU LIKE IT.

“ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE, AND ALL THE MEN AND WOMEN MERELY PLAYERS; THEY HAVE THEIR EXITS AND THEIR ENTRANCES, AND ONE MAN IN HIS TIME PLAYS MANY PARTS.”

We all have roles to play in our lives and these change as we move through it.

Do you find yourself thrashing against the tide of human indifference and selfishness? Are you oppressed by the sense that while you care, others don’t?

That, because of humankind’s callousness, civilisation and the rest of life on Earth are basically stuffed?

Many of those who dominate public life have a peculiar fixation on fame, money and power. Their extreme self-centeredness places them in a small minority, but, because we see them everywhere, we assume that they are representative of humanity.

“It’s all about political opportunism and humanitarian posturing,”Afficher l'image d'origine

With the best will in the world it is unlikely that you will turn out as an adult with no unhelpful of unintended modifications – or what is called “conditioning”.

The true YOU is the one that finds life fulfilling in a deep sense rather than theoretically good on a purely intellectual level.

The personality is not YOU, you have a personality, so if you want your “self” to be aware of itself, you will have a long wait!

However, you, as an independent observer of your own internal processes, can become aware of what your personality is up to, how it is behaving and the impact on yourself and others.

As Fritz Perls said:

“Truth can be tolerated only if you discover it yourself because then, the pride of discovery makes the truth palatable.”

These days with technologies we hardly understand where we going never mind how we are.

It’s the culture.

Technology isn’t a section in the newspaper any more.

I think people are tired of complexity and they’re hungering for clarity, a simpler time.

The more we do things, the more they become a habit and the more that we think in the same way, the more these patterns of thought and behaviour become our identity.

The more that we depend on the masks and the safer that we feel as a result of wearing them, the greater the risk and uncertainty we feel of taking off our mask and interacting openly, honestly and authentically.

With the massive economic and cultural transformation driven by Silicon Valley are we no longer in control of who we are?

mask masks incertitude life

However if the personality is our sense of identity, but is not us, then who are we?

Our personality is like a piece of armour which is at the same time our greatest shield and also potentially our greatest prison. It enables us to deal with the outside world, but it can also insulate us from it – and from other people.

We are also not our personality, which has in large part been forged as a result of the experiences of surviving and protecting ourselves in the real world.

Take for instance, Politicians. given their image-conscious online life in the public eye  .

Most millennials still worry about attaching themselves with a click to the wrong clique or hashtag:

“It heightens the level of uncertainty, anxiety and risk aversion, to know that you’re only a bad day and half a dozen tweets from being fired.”

Smart phones are dominating our sense of identity and we will if not careful end up feeling lost when they end.

You need to find an internal source for our identity, not an external one.

The old verities of who you are now seem quaint, but many millennials are now paralyzed by all their choices.

There was a time that we understood that not everyone was destined for greatness.

If you work hard and play by the rules, you’ll lose out to those guys who can wire computers to make bets on Wall Street faster than the next guy to become instant multimillionaires.

Or losers who have soured our sturdy and spiritual DNA with too much food, too much greed, too much narcissism, too many lies, too many spies, too many fat-cat bonuses, too many cat videos on the evening news, too many Buzzfeed listicles like “33 Photos Of Corgi Butts,” and too much mindless and malevolent online chatter?

Our quiet traditional virtues bow to our noisy visceral divisions, while churning technology is swiftly remolding the national character in ways that are still a blur.

Boldness is often chased away by distraction, confusion, hesitation and fragmentation. Or are we forever smaller, stingier, dumber, less ambitious and more cynical?

Have we lost control of our not-so-manifest destiny?

Misanthropy grants a free pass to the grasping, power-mad minority who tend to dominate our political systems. If only we knew how unusual they are, we might be more inclined to shun them and seek better leaders. It contributes to the real danger we confront: not a general selfishness, but a general passivity.

We’re a little bit scared of our own shadow. And, sadly, we see ourselves as a people who can never understand one another. We’ve given up on the notion that we can cohere, by holding together people with deep differences.

We’ve broken Iraq, liberating it to be a draconian state-run on Sharia law, full of America/ English-hating jihadists who were too brutal even for Al Qaeda.

We have to re earn greatness.

But that’s going to be hard to restore in the world today.

Young people are more optimistic than their rueful elders, especially those in the technology world. They think of themselves as global citizens but are more interested in this moments of crazy opportunity.

With awareness comes freedom.

As you become aware of your fixed attitudes, beliefs and values that may no longer be useful to you and you begin to understand that there were good reasons for you to have adopted them, you can begin to see that it is neither good nor bad that this is the way life is – and the way that you are – it is just a natural consequence of living the human experience.

The authentic self is the true self underneath all the conditioning that has been acquired through life’s experiences.

Being in touch with our true selves is about getting real, not living in a fantasy of who we could or should be, but living with what is.

Life has become more complex but we hardly ever notice it because technology has made complexity simpler than ever. Who you are and where you are is tracked and sold on to ever is interested. The Private who is dead and gone.

The only knowledge we need to have is the knowledge of where to find stuff.

Humans today are like most smartphones and tablets – their ability to solve problems depends not on the knowledge they can store but on their capacity to connect to a place where they can retrieve the answer to find a solution.

Technology will continue to evolve and the gap between what can be solved with and without it will only increase. That is, we will become more and more dependent of technology and the only intellectual disadvantage will be the inability (or unwillingness) to learn to use it.

One could also imagine that this IT-overload may prove too much for some — In short, people who are able to keep up with technology will outsmart those who don’t (even more than they do now).

So perhaps there is no need to know how you are but more importantly where you are.

Too much Google, too much Face Book, Twitter, clicking from one site to another, or for that matter reading with out pause, constitutes a kind of scattering, a distraction, an agitation of the mind.

Our reliance on Google Search, is resulting in unrealistic self-confidence in our cognitive abilities.

That’s right, we are all plagiarising the internet without even realising it.

You might think that all is this is just hog wash but in a few hundred years from now most of us will not know the meaning of the word where and if we don’t know where we are from there is little chance of knowing who you are.

If we look at western Europe it appeared that we are not building anything, but merely trying to hang on to something we have inherited, but don’t necessarily value.Afficher l'image d'origine

With the immigration and refugee influx this will have to change.

What is the narrative that drives what we are building in Europe… and who is creating that narrative?  Not us.

We have derived a narrative from a century of conflict, and the received narrative is shaped around not fighting with each other. Fully understandable. But, for my children’s generation the wars of the twentieth century are as remote as the Battles of Agincourt or Waterloo.

This is why I wonder if Europe needs a new driving narrative that helps us consciously shape who and what we want Europe to become.

The old narrative of solidarity no longer applies.

We have Razor Wire replacing open frontiers. The Dutch reverting to extracting gold fillings and the Belgians wanting concentration Camps in Greece never mind what ‘solidarity’ means to young unemployed people in Greece or Spain.

So, the questions remain.

Who do we think we are and what do we want Europe to become? And who will shape the narrative for a new generation?

Billions of decent people tut and shake their heads as the world burns, immobilised by the conviction that no one else cares.

Attitudes of fear and paranoia adopted by many have led to an increasingly hostile global environment.

Cherished and treasured human values are trampled beneath a host of vitriolic “we’re better than you” convictions. Our world is sick, however, facing political and environmental disaster on an unprecedented scale.

Many of the problems plaguing us stem directly from deeply-held convictions of social differentiation and exclusion, rooted in philosophies that justify heinous acts in the service of a ‘greater good’. We are what we do. We have to start doing better.

We have to start somewhere. Why not a World Aid Commission Of 0.05%. ( see previous Post.)

In this century we have had only three brief moments when a majority of us said they were satisfied with the way things were going:

Have a go at naming them.

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS THE EUROPEAN UNION ALL ITS MADE OUT TO BE.

19 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by in European Union.

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( Five to Six minute read)

The European Union seems incapable of undertaking economic reforms and defining its place in the world.Afficher l'image d'origine

Citizens feel isolated from the institutions in Brussels and see no way to influence European level decisions.

The EU is one of the motors of capitalist globalisation, the rule that all decisions should be made on the basis of profitability alone.

Over the course of the coming year it looks like it is in for a large dose of turmoil.

The lack of fluency in financialese shouldn’t preclude anyone from understanding what is going on in Europe or what may yet happen.

So let’s have a closer look at what is means to-day to be an European Citizen with a EU passport.

Years ago I had a lovely greed passport. Now I have a wine coloured EU Irish passport.

What is the difference? Globalisation has already deeply undermined national citizenship as a bond between individuals and states.

You could say that EU citizenship provides the most vivid reminder of the radical shift in the meaning of citizenship that made it a more ethically acceptable institution. Non-discrimination on the basis of nationality – the very core of EU law – provides the litmus test for what national citizenship is really about in the EU today.

The primary value of citizenship lies in the mobility rights attached to passports.

Does this appease my lost of my Irish Passport.?  Does it make me feel European?

So in some ways the answer to the above questions is Yes.

On the other hand I come from a small Island with a long history and a culture far removed from Europe.  So I remain Irish first and European for the sake of Commerce and Peace among nations.

The problem is that the EU passport is rapidly reflecting the instrumental value of free movement rights attached to EU citizenship for the wealthy and mobile global elites.

They are willing to dish out hundreds of thousands of dollars to gain a freshly minted passport in their new “home country.”

That this demand exists is not fully surprising given that this is a world of regulated mobility and unequal opportunity, and a world where not all passports are treated equally at border crossings.

Rapid processes of market expansionism have now reached what for many is the most sacrosanct non-market good: membership in a political community.

More puzzling is the willingness of governments – our public trustees and legal guardians of citizenship – to engage in processes that come very close to, and in some cases cannot be described as anything but, the sale and barter of membership goods in exchange for a hefty bank wire transfer or large stack of cash.

Everybody knows that immigration is among the most contentious policy issues of our times, and recent years have witnessed a “restrictive turn” with respect to ordinary immigration and naturalisation applicants, such as those who enter on the basis of a family reunification claim or for humanitarian reasons.

At stake is the regulation of the most important and sensitive decision that any political community faces: how to define who belongs, or ought to belong, within its circle of members.

Not everyone knows, however, that governments are now proactively facilitating faster and smoother access to citizenship for those who can pay.

Many EU countries offer privileged access to EU citizenship to large populations outside the EU territory on grounds of distant ancestry or co-ethnic identity, obliging thereby all other Member States to admit immigrants from third countries to their territories and labour markets as EU citizens.

Consider the following examples.

Affluent foreign investors were offered citizenship in Cyprus as “compensation” for their Cypriot bank account deposit losses.

In 2012, Portugal introduced a “golden residence permit” to attract real estate and other investments by well-to-do individuals seeking a foothold in the EU.

Spain recently adopted a similar plan.

On 12 November 2013, Malta approved amendments to its Citizenship Act that put in place a new individual investor legal category that will allow high-net-worth applicants to gain a “golden passport” in return for € 650,000.

Under these cash for-passport programmes, many of the requirements that ordinarily apply to those seeking naturalisation, such as language competency, extended residency periods or renunciation of another citizenship, are waived as part of an active competition, if not an outright bidding war, to attract the ultra-rich.

Portugal, for example, offers a fast track for qualified applicants that entitles them to a 5 year permanent residence permit, visa-free travel in Schengen countries, the right to bring in their immediate family members, and ultimately the right to acquire Portuguese citizenship and with it the benefits of EU citizenship. This package comes with a hefty price tag: a capital transfer investment of € 1 million, a real estate property purchase at a value of € 500,000, or the creation of local jobs. The investment needs to remain active in Portugal for the programme’s duration.

Alas, the individual who gains the golden permit bears no similar obligation.

Simply spending 7 days in Portugal during the first year and fourteen days in the subsequent years is enough to fulfil the programme’s requirements.

This is not the only example or anything new: It is more or less wholesale around the world.

Such programmes are found in, among other places, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and the United States. Both kinds of programme raise serious ethical quandaries, but the unfettered cash-for-passport programmes are far more extreme and blatant than the traditional investment programmes.

They contribute to some of the most disturbing developments in 21st century citizenship, including the emergence of new forms of inequality and stratification.

So much for the conclusion that “real and effective ties” between the individual and the state are expected to underbid the grant of citizenship.

Since EU citizenship is derived from Member State nationality and determining the latter remains an exclusive competence of Member States, EU law does not provide much leverage against either the sale of EU passports or other policies of creating new EU citizens without genuine links to any EU country.

Citizenship should be considered as the kind of good that money should not be able to buy but earned. 

Instead of offering their citizenship for money, democratic states could bestow it on persons who are threatened by persecution or who fight for democratic values as a means of protection or exit option with the provision of earning the right to residence-based naturalisation.

A global market for citizenship status is corrupting democracy by breaking down the wall the separates the spheres of money and power.

However, that monetary investment can be a way of contributing to the common good of a political community and should therefore not be summarily dismissed as a legitimate reason for acquiring citizenship.

That states have legitimate interests in “inviting the rich, the beautiful and the smart” and that investor citizenship is not essentially different from the widespread practice of offering citizenship to prominent sportsmen and –women.

Some states offer citizenship to foreigners who have served in their army or have otherwise provided exceptional service to the country.

There is a broader trend towards relinking citizenship acquisition to social class, which manifests itself, on the one hand, in offering citizenship to the rich and, on the other hand, in income and knowledge tests for ordinary naturalisations of foreign residents.

Why are states putting citizenship up for sale? And what precisely is wrong with easy-pass naturalisation along the lines of the cash-for-passport programmes? Is it the queue jumping? The attaching of a price tag to citizenship? The erosion of something foundational about political membership itself? Or, perhaps, all of the above?

Such programmes are found in, among other places, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and the United States. Both kinds of programme raise serious ethical quandaries, but the unfettered cash-for-passport programmes are far more extreme and blatant than the traditional investment programmes. They contribute to some of the most disturbing developments in 21st century citizenship, including the emergence of new forms of inequality and stratification.

Indeed, if a Romanian is good enough to be embraced by British society as equal, subjecting a Moldovan to any kind of tests is utterly illogical: the arguments of the protection of culture, language, etc. are simply devoid of relevance when more than half a billion EU citizens a exempted from them.

The European bosses want to use North Africa and the other countries on the fringes of Europe as a highly exploitative, low wage sweatshop where workers have no union rights and environmental legislation is minimal.

There are two parts to this policy.

The nastiest side of the EU is on the question of migration. Here EU policy has resulted in thousands of deaths in the last decade.

Thousands have died trying to cross the borders that surround Europe.

They have drowned in the Mediterranean and suffocated in the backs of containers. Dozens have died in suspicious circumstances at the hands of immigration police. Tens of thousands more sit in prison camps across Europe, waiting to be deported. At the same time large sectors of the European economy, particularly in agriculture, cleaning and fast food are dependent on the low wage workforce the migrants who manage to cross the border provide.

So Ask me again. Is the EU passport all its made out to be.

Full belonging to a society is thus not subjected any more to an arbitrary approval, putting all the bizarre language, culture and other tests that states subject newcomers to in a very interesting perspective: the very existence of the EU disproves their validity and relevance.

They consist in nothing else but purification through humiliation: the “others’” language and culture is presumed as not good enough and social learning is dismissed, forcing people to waste their time by subjecting them to profoundly disturbing rituals.

The very success of obtaining EU citizenship by a period of probation is the strongest argument against these practices.

It’s not just an understanding of a language that makes you integrate, it’s the core belief is your country, not a Trading Block.

We all know that the EU originally was the Common Market.

Since then it has continuously evolved.

This means is that the EU wants to turn water supply, education, health and refuse collection from being social services provided to all to profit-making enterprises provided to those who can pay.

Surely, zealous free-marketeers will enthusiastically defend such programmes as freeing us from the shackles of culture, nation and tradition and moving citizenship forward to a new and more competitive global age of transactional contracting in which, as Nobel Prize laureate Gary Becker once put it, a price mechanism substitutes for the complicated criteria that now determine legal entry.

So why is it important to understand how citizenship-by-investment has come about?

Because of its large impact on an essential political institution and its success in carving out global mobility corridors through entangled states.

The UK, one of the first states to introduce Investor Visa (with a price tag of £ 1 million or a bank loan from an UK financial institution and personal assets worth 2 million) recently revised this policy as it came to its attention that investors used the capital for investment as security to back up loans and that investments were placed in offshore custody.

May be in 2016 the Flag will change to look like this.

Afficher l'image d'origine

or     Afficher l'image d'origine   orAfficher l'image d'origine

 

Afficher l'image d'origine

or   Afficher l'image d'origine   or    Afficher l'image d'origine

There is one thing for sure, fences or not it will have more than a few new Citizens.

All comments appreciated.

THE BEADY EYE SHOUTS SHAME ON US. AN OPEN LETTER TO THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION.

03 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by in European Union.

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For crying out loud there can be no heart that has not being moved by the latest picture from the Mediterranean Shores.A Turkish border guard carries the body of a migrant child after a number of migrants died and a smaller number were reported missing after boats carrying them to the Greek island of Kos capsized, near the Turkish resort of Bodrum

If there is they don’t represent me. 

Europe for god sake of all places in the world has seen enough death in its history.

There is no point to a European Union if it can not united to help people fleeing War.

While Europe is squabbling, people are dying.

It time to stop the political diarrhea.

Some countries, like Sweden and Germany, are being generous with their acceptance of refugees, but warn that they cannot be this generous forever. Other countries, like Britain, are strictly applying regulations to dissuade migrants and asylum seekers, while opposing a European Commission proposal in June for mandatory quotas for settlement, to help share the burden.

There is no European Union standard for asylum; no common list of countries regarded as in conflict, and thus more likely to produce refugees; and no collective centers where asylum seekers can be met, housed, fed and screened.

On the Greek crisis, “we had one meeting after another at the highest level,”  these are people not money perhaps that is the difference.

For crying out loud get your fingers out of your self loving arse holes. 

 

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT WHO IS A REFUGEE?

25 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by in European Union., Humanity., Politics., Where's the Global Outrage.

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Understanding the problems confronting refugees—and those striving to protect them—depends on grasping precise legal definitions.

The core definition of a “refugee” is contained in the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, which define a refugee as an individual who: “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”

With biggest driving force for change still to manifest itself: It seem to me that the definition is long over due a revamp.

Climate Change will like the Internet have a profound effect on the world.

The Internet alone has assisted the creation of wars, by highlighting the inequalities that exist between the have and have not’s. It is exposing Capitalism and the free Market for what it real is. It is unveiling corruption, challenging the mass media and assisting mass immigration by generating sizeable networks to deal with the any obstacles set in their paths.

Climate change will change any definition of undocumented aliens asylum seekers. It will displace millions, impacting on the economy, by having a positive affecting on some groups and negatively others.

Trade agreements like the TTPI will weaken the case of those who would venture a rigid and single-factor comparison between “political” immigration and “economic” immigration.

We can expect the migratory issue to become increasingly political. A more rational approach would be to consider who the illegal immigrants are, before making immigration laws.

Much of Europe’s brewing migration debate carries a polarized tone of certainty, and migrants themselves are often slotted into neat “political” and “economic” categories.

You can see this at the moment as the EU struggles to establish who are political refugees and illegal immigration, on the role of economic versus non-economic factors. The definition Refugee has and is being ignored.

Is it possible to distinguish between the poverty of “condition” and the poverty of “position”?

Poverty, while a commonly cited factor “pushing” migration, is difficult to define.

In the former situation, the two main factors are a lack of employment and steady income, which prompt a feeling of having “nothing to lose.”Their biggest concern and expectation is to improve their physical well-being, something they regard as impossible at home.

This element has also got a growing home-grown element of poverty due to unemployment, no hours contracts, and exploration of the vulnerable within the EU.

Poverty of position, in contrast, involves migrants who use emigration as a way of more rapidly climbing the social ladder. These migrants feel that their income and position in their home country will never match their social capital (for example, their level of formal education or training). They move to places where they believe they can realize their aspirations.

Theses generic terms therefore covers a wide range of facts but Violence and Conflict are the leading causes of the current wave of migration [to Europe]

It is rooted in the crazy [U.S.] idea to launch an intervention in Iraq, which allegedly had weapons of mass destruction, but nothing was found.” A disaster that destabilized the Middle East giving rise of terrorism that we now see to-day.

However some of the blame for many asylum seekers is not wars.

For example, persecution is not necessarily imposed by the government or other official institutions in their country of origin. Some may face violence at the hands of mafia networks, armed groups, or a dominant majority group in connection with factors that are not directly political, such as ethnicity.

Others may be threatened for having a lifestyle that involves a socially unacceptable choice of spouse, sexual orientation, etc. As a result, some people are threatened and persecuted without fully meeting the demands of the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.

The long the short and tall of it is that Northern Africa today can no longer defend Europe from the immense masses of people on the move.

As Europe turns its back, these are refugees, not migrants, are arriving in their thousands on Greek shores .

The number thought to be in the UK could be as high as 863,000 – larger than the population of Leeds. By comparison, Italy was thought to have up to 461,000, Germany had 457,000, France’s top estimate was 400,000 and Spain had 354,000. Greece, it is estimated that about 100.000-150.000 undocumented refugees and migrants enter Greece each year, among them maybe around 10.000 unaccompanied minors.

Refugees and other vulnerable people deserve the protection and assistance to which they are entitled under international law. Rather then the inhumane treatment seen in the below:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/08/streams-refugees-flow-macedonia-greece-150823072040825.html

In a wide range of countries, attitudes toward immigrants appear to be related to labor-market concerns, security and cultural considerations, as well as individual feelings toward political refugees and illegal immigration.

Are attitudes toward foreigners influenced by economic considerations or are they driven exclusively by non-economic issues?

At what point do we as citizens of the EU conclude that these people have already suffered enough and deserve to be aided in their flight to safety?

Without legal alternative routes for refugees to enter other European countries, people fleeing conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere have taken matters into their own hands

The future of Europe, will be determined by its ability to confront the issue of immigration. Whatever the attitude of the government, population pressure will be immense on Europe and there is no chance to prevent such migration.

On the one hand, the Fortress Europe concept essentially focuses on the role of external border controls and neglects the entry and settlement of clandestine immigrants and undocumented aliens. At the same time, border controls, deportations, mass arrests, and internment of migrants in closed centers and prisons invalidate the thesis of Europe as a sieve.

Europe, which is neighbor to many war zones takes in more than 1.5 million legal migrants.

Overall, forced displacement numbers in Europe totalled 6.7 million at the end of the year, compared to 4.4 million at the end of 2013, and with the largest proportion of this being Syrians in Turkey and Ukrainians in the Russian Federation. Syria’s ongoing war, with 7.6 million people displaced internally, and 3.88 million people displaced into the surrounding region and beyond as refugees, has alone made the Middle East the world’s largest producer and host of forced displacement. Adding to the high totals from Syria was a new displacement of least 2.6 million people in Iraq and 309,000 newly displaced in Libya.

Today, Libya, between 500,000 and one million people aspire to come to Europe.

With population growth of 7% or 8% in Africa, against just over 1% here, migratory pressure is mechanical.

It is not possible or desirable that Europe opens its doors to every tom dick and harry. On the other hand it not possible to address the situation with 4-meter (13-foot) high fence on its borders like Hungary, or We need to build a wall, we need to keep illegals out,” Donald Trump said at last Thursday’s GOP debate.

I for one do not want to be represented by Israeli or Berlin wall.

It needs policies that better serve the interests of both nations and immigrants.

It is beyond me that we cannot move FRONTEX (It coordinates EU States’ actions in the implementation of EU border management measures.) from Warsaw (Poland) to some where useful.  So far this year, more than 180,000 migrants have reached Greece and Italy by sea (others come from Turkey via the land border with Bulgaria).

In the first four months of this year, more than a quarter of a million people claimed asylum in a European Union member state.

Where is the big deal in setting up humanitarian corridors for asylum seekers. To putting up initial reception center. To agreeing to a binding quota system for distributing refugees among all European countries.

I am sure if an appeal was made to all European Citizens the majority of the 509 million would not begrudge 10 Euros a month.

Let us hope that Europe can respond intelligently by rejecting generalisations and simplistic discourse by being true to its values, notably in terms of asylum and yet be more effective.

I leave you with the words of  Ahmed Satuf, another refugee from Idlib in Syria, told Al Jazeera he didn’t want anything from Macedonia, except for being allowed to cross its borders.

“I’m not a terrorist. We are humans. Where’s the humanity? Where’s the world? Everyone here, they are families,” he said.

“We don’t need anything. We don’t need money. Let us cross. I want to go to Germany.”

Europe above all places in the world born of integrationist ideals yet undermined by participants’ unwillingness to share costs as well as benefits, has a chance to shine.

“For us, today Europe is at stake” 

said Orban Viktor the president of Hungary,  “The survival, disappearance or, more precisely, the transformation beyond recognition of the European citizen’s lifestyle, European values and the European nations.”

He knows where he can stick that finger of his.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Beady eye looks at what is wrong with the European Union.

11 Saturday Jul 2015

Posted by in European Union.

≈ 1 Comment

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In the next few months and for years to come perhaps you will be reading a lot of bull shit on this subject.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of human eyes"

Where is the European Union going or has gone wrong.

Well you don’t have to wait to know why.

It is the deformed structure of globalisation, which favors the owners of capital and concentrates of wealth that is the culprit.

(Add the demographic tipping point across the Pacific Rim and central Europe, and you have a portrait of worldwide “secular stagnation”.)

The current Greece crises in the Euro Zone is shining a light on a technocrat dictatorship which is beyond democratic control if ever attempted.

The euro zone is least able to respond to the Greek crises because it is a dysfunctional construct.

∑ The European Union with 751 Members and 24 official working languages costs , € 1,756 billion (2014) of which 35% is for staff expenses, mainly salaries for the 6000 officials working in the General Secretariat and in the Political Groups. Moreover, this expenditure covers interpretation costs, the costs of external translation and staff mission expenses.

Another words about 27% (of the 2014 budget) is dedicated to MEPs’ expenses, including salaries, costs for travel, offices and the pay of personal assistants.

Expenditure on Parliament’s buildings accounts for 11% (2014)

Information policy and administrative expenditure such as IT and telecommunications account for 21% (2014)

Political Group activities account for a further 6% ( 2014) ∑

What’s wrong then?

More to the point what can be done?

The first is the recognition of sharing a common history, which usually means sharing episodes of violence, pain, suffering, and, yes, achievement.

Next there is no meaningful representative democracy without taxation.

Citizens and voters pay attention when they are taxed.

A European tax that replaces government approved transfers of funds could do wonders for getting Europeans interested in Europe.

(The willingness to transfer significant spending and taxing powers to European institutions is very limited.)

The European project needs anchor figures chosen directly by Europeans.

A presidential figure elected through the rule “one European, one vote” would be a good start. A figure to love and to hate, that could engage Europeans with the legitimacy of the vote and (why not?) have an important say in the dying and the paying issues that can promote a new citizenship and a new polity.

We all know that the founding aspiration of the European Union was born out of War and that is where it is going if it does not represent the people of Europe not the Free market with its proxy behind the doors trade agreements.

And we all know that once money enters any equation aspirations go out the window. What follows is the erosion of the common good, democracy and in comes – I am all right Jack.

The regulation of money creation is, essentially, a undemocratic economic policy and there is no better example of this than the current Greek crises.

Indeed the greatest risk for the survival of the Euro zone today is the risk emanating from social and political upheavals in countries that are forced into a deflationary spiral. 

The euro zone has let it happen in Greece.

Europe’s authorities have so mismanaged monetary and fiscal strategy that the whole currency bloc has tipped into deflation.

The ideas of Europeanism, federalism, and even “post-material” politics appeal, albeit in different ways, to new possibilities for political, cultural, and
social cohesion will force Europe to think deeper about its first motivation for establishing a common economic market: attaining a long-lasting peace in Europe.

The means to create and pass on a similar European narrative to a wide mass of individuals is now open to question.

We ought to know by now, economic fluctuations hit different jurisdictions differently.  If these economic fluctuations are relatively synchronous or resources sufficiently mobile, monetary policy is an appropriate instrument, and the area to which it is applied is a so-called “optimal currency area”.

The problem is that we are still, evidently, in the process of making Europe, but may be well advised to start making Europeans at the same time.

It can be sum up in one word.  Diversity.

Often seen not as a liability it is the core fact that allows for change and progress. The “unity in diversity” motto is but a starting point, which urgently needs new incarnations.

http://business.financ€35bn to help the economy” ialpost.com/news/economy/drachma-diplomacy-what-would-life-after-the-eu-look-like-for-greece

The question is:

Is Tsipras really looking for a deal with Europe?

The Greek government now accounts for about 60% of the country’s entire GDP.  Leaving the euro zone could cost the Greek economy up to 36% of its GDP over the next few years.

If Greece switches currency, any euros left in Greek bank accounts would depreciate by 50% to 60% in a matter of days.

The recent decision by the ECB to act a lender of last resort is a major regime change for the Euro zone. It is not sufficient, however, to guarantee the survival of the monetary union. 

Perhaps Debt pooling would ties the hands of the member countries of the Euro zone and shows that they are serious in their intentions to stick together.

Where did all the Quantitative Easing go ? Not to Greece – 60 billion a month till Sep 2016.

When the one size of the single monetary policy does not fit all, supplementary, possibly coordinated, national fiscal policies should also be activated – where national fiscal policies are tightly constrained and loosely coordinated, especially so in the countries where the QE impact will be smaller.

The result may eventually be dim.

It is the case with any monetary policy instrument in a monetary union, QE in the EZ is fraught with the heterogeneity problem of the recipients of monetary policy. The institutional strictures and pressures under which the ECB operates will make the task harder. Of course, easier monetary conditions will help the EZ economies.

The endogenous dynamics of booms and busts that are endemic in capitalism continued to work at the national level in the Euro zone and that the monetary union in no way disciplined these into a union-wide dynamics.

The monetary union probably exacerbated these national booms and busts.

The existing stabilizers that existed at the national level prior to the start of the union were stripped away from the member-states without being transposed at the monetary union level. This left the member states “naked” and fragile, unable to deal with the coming national disturbances.

Even if Greece signs up to the package of tax and spending reforms demanded the most likely outcome – is that Greece’s debt would still be 118% of GDP in 2030.