July 3, 2008. Liberal leader expresses dismay at socialist populism over Lisbon Treaty.

On the margins of an ALDE Group meeting in Tallinn yesterday, European Liberal Democrat Leader, Graham Watson, met Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip to discuss the future of the Lisbon Treaty in light of the Irish referendum and recent unhelpful remarks by European socialists (notably PASOK President George A. Papandreou and Austrian Chancellor Gusenbauer) demanding referendums on changes to the Treaty.

“Recent moves by Socialist leaders to make all EU treaty changes dependent on national referenda is at best irresponsible and at worst - an ill-conceived bow to populist pressure. Pawning the solution to the treaty stalemate is a bid to court eurosceptic voters which makes us all hostages to fortune” said Watson after the meeting. “The Irish rejected the Treaty, so it is right that their Government be invited to come back with an alternative solution to the dilemma we now face. Their task will not be assisted by such unilateral declarations.”

Watson went on to praise Estonia’s constructive role in Europe and the country’s Liberal economic model combining a flexible labour market and strict fiscal policies.

We saw His “Replika” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1976, and himself, and excerpts from his work on Dante, at La Mama that year. When we visited years later Warshaw, we made it as an important part of that visit to see his Teatr Studio, in that Stalinist Wedding-Cake of a building in the “Palace of Culture.”

Also, reading his obituary, we understand a little better his background. He was born in Rzeszow, a place we visited to see the ruins of what was once a tremendous Rabbinic Court. Though not Jewish, Szaina, with a name that might have shown Jewish influence, knew because of his youth experiences about the terrible loss, not only to Jewry, but to Poland itself. After the war he studied theater in Krakow - the main city of what was once Western Galizzia. A place full of memories from what was once a flourishing Jewish culture center. Though Nazis destroyed the Synagogues and killed the people, they did not touch the tomb of the Remuh - Rabbi Moshe Iserless - that survived thus, and is still to be seen with the 400 year old tree that sprouted from under the tombstone. Even the Catholics in town regard the place as holly - so no-one, not even the Nazis, dared to destroy that part of the cemetery that was the center of the Jewish part of town.

Five Catholic Priests, Professors at the Jagelonian University, established a Hebraic studies department in this city that had no Jews left. It was for the locals to study Hebrew in order to try to revive some of the past glory. When I visited there for a three week stay with a group of students from NYU, one of the professors gave me a new book that was a compilation of the archives of the old Krakow headquarter of the local Bnei Brith organization. I delivered the material to the Washington DC headquarters. It is these Professors that helped create a row of Jewish style restaurant in that Kazimiresz part of town - on the Street where there are the remains of the Remuh. The local Poles played there Jewish Klezmer music. I was one evening astonished seeing Elie Wiesel “Kibitzing” a game of chess in one of these restaurants - the one called Ariel.

The theater revival had also to do with an attempt at revival of the Jewish culture. Krakow has thus what was seen as a strong innovative streak of theater. Very dark in its content but quite lively and spirited in the way it is staged. It was this sort of theater, some based in Krakow and some in Warshaw, that brought into existence the modern theater of the seventies. Grotowski, Kantor, Sjaina were very different pillars of this phenomenon.

The obituary also mentions the town of Nowa Hutta, and Sjaina’s Teatr Ludowy. We were there, and what was even more interesting, at a festival in Krakow, I remember a performing visit from that place. Another theater was Crikot.

So, please read the obituary, and be inspired that from all that darkness sprouted unbelievable art. This was the pain that had to find an outlet - and if you like it or not - that was real theater and real self sacrificing performance.
People like Ellen Stewart and Richard Schechner can still testify to the spirit of these people that were active in the 60s and 70s, and left their influence on the modern stage. As it is extremely well described in the obituary - theater is not about words but about acting. Szaina knew to bring out that pain with nearly no words altogether - and he communicated that pain directly to our hearts. Surely, later on others wrote and staged pieces with more wording, but the Grotowsky method has become part of theater education. In our review of the “Persians” at Sienna college in Albany, New York, I was aware that Dr. Mahmood Karimi Hakak, an Iranian, had studied with Richard Schechner, and thus introduced some of the elements of stage design that originated with this sort of theater.

Further, as the UN deals now with the question of what is Genocide, and we just had an event at the UN on the topic on June 26th, with the UnderSecretary-General Kiyotaka Akasaka making the opening introduction, it should indeed be considered as educational imperative the viewing of the filmed performance of Szajna’s Replika, as he suggested himself.

Budapest to house EU Techonology Institute - the Europe’s answer to MIT.
RENATA GOLDIROVA, June 19, 2008 EUobserver/Brusells.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Hungary’s capital, Budapest, has been selected to house the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), the union’s flagship project to boost innovation, research and higher education.

On Wednesday (18 June), ministers in charge of competitiveness met in Brussels to put an end to the wrangling over the institute’s seat. Last month, they failed to agree due to a Polish veto on the matter.

Slovene education minister Mojca Kucler - who was responsible for steering the dossier through the European Council, which represents EU states - praised “efforts invested by member states for the common good of the EU” and described the institute as “a special milestone in the European research policy”.

The European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has also welcomed the ministerial deal, saying that the EIT will add to Europe’s capacity to bridge the innovation gap with its major competitors, the US and Japan.

In 2006, the 27-nation EU invested 1.85 percent of GDP into research and development, far from its 2010 goal of three percent. By contrast, the US spends around 2.7 percent.

According to EU education commissioner Jan Figel, the work of the institute would be organised through so-called knowledge and innovation communities - partnerships of universities, research organisations and companies.

The commission believes that such networks could help transform education and research and attract bright young brains from within and beyond Europe.

“It is not going to be one dot on the map,” Mr Figel told EUobserver, referring to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which inspired the EIT concept. “We offer co-operation so the EU becomes more innovative,” he said.

Budapest was the only applicant able to meet the two criteria set by ministers - that the winner should be a “new” member state and not already be home to an EU agency.

But regarding the latter point, EU diplomats feared Poland’s behaviour at the negotiation table.

The country, also bidding for seat, had previously threatened not to withdraw its own application, unless it won some level of participation. It wanted, for example, the new institute’s governing board to meet in the Polish city of Wroclaw, one diplomat told EUobserver.

Besides Budapest and Wroclaw, three other applicants were keen to host the administrative headquarters of the institute - Germany’s Jena, Spain’s Sant Cugat del Valles, while Slovak capital Bratislava joined forces with Vienna in launching a cross-border bid.

The Budapest-based institute will operate with a total budget of €2.37 billion from 2008-2013, with €308.7 million of that coming from EU coffers. The rest of the monies are supposed to come from public and private partners as well as from the new institute’s own activities.

————–

We hope that, for the sake of coherence, the Budapest headquarters of EIT will find ways to cooperate with the Bratislava-Vienna group also. The Wroclaw push seemed out of place and was rather a clear effort at grand-standing.
We realize that  the City of Wroclaw is involved in such issues as the organisation of a European Citizens’ Forum (over two days) entitled: Towards a Europe of solidarity, but we insist that an EIT will have to deal with such technical issues as the development of technologies in view of changes that will have to happen because of global warming/climate change.  The institute will need laboratories and not just talk-estivals. Poland seems to have misread this intent.

The referendum: populism vs democracy: The idea of the referendum as an instrument of the people’s will rests on pre-democratic foundations, says George Schöpflin on www.OpenDemocracy.net

16 - 06 - 2008

The result of the Republic of Ireland’s referendum on 12 June 2008, a rejection of the European Union’s “reform treaty” agreed at the Lisbon summit in October 2007, has precipitated a crisis for the union whose resolution is hard to foresee. For the victorious “no” side, and for those elsewhere who support the use of referenda to decide on constitutional or other matters, the outcome in Ireland is also on three grounds a vindication of the institution of the referendum:
▪ it restores democracy to the people
▪ it allows the people to tell political elites to be responsive
▪ it restores “the people’s will” to the storehouse of democratic instruments.

These propositions - which can be summarised as the seduction of direct democracy - are misconceived. The championing of referenda they embody proceeds from a series of four untenable assumptions, which are worth itemising in some detail.

George Schőpflin is a member of the European parliament for Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Union) and was Jean Monnet professor of politics at University College London.

An unsafe vehicle:

First, in complex modern societies there is no such thing as “the people”. The concept is a leftover from the time when democracy had to be legitimated in the eyes of anti-democrats; its residue today leaves it open to political manipulation. The homogeneity it implies can hardly be reconciled with the reality of an enormously varied modern society composed of millions of members with multiple motivations and choices, used to exercising individual rationality in the marketplace. How can they be compressed into something with a single voice, namely “the people”?

In too many cases - European integration among them - referenda function as an instrument not of democracy, but of populism. They can assist democracy only in a few special circumstances: for example, to resolve an issue that is more ethical than political (legalising divorce or abortion, say); or to unblock a political system (offering autonomy or independence to the population of a particular region and thus perhaps helping to avoid civil war or ameliorate division).

An example of the latter is when the populations of the various republics of the Soviet Union voted for or against declaring their sovereignty, which led to their independence as states. Another case where the referendum was a legitimate use of the instrument was the votes in 1997 on devolution for Scotland and Wales within the United Kingdom. The referendum held on 9 March 2008 in Hungary was ostensibly about the government’s health-reform project; in reality it was about a means to articulate the deep disquiet in society about the refusal of the Hungarian government to listen to that disquiet.

Second, referenda are profoundly unsuitable ways of addressing complex issues, because they offer the illusion of a simple answer to complexity. In this sense, they pull the voters into the pre-political stance that lies at the heart of populism. Modern politics is about weighing various options, in circumstances where issues only very seldom appear in stark, good-vs-bad form. Referenda have an implicit, contextual message that says the opposite, something along the lines of “vote no” or “vote yes” and all your problems will be solved; as Tøger Seidenfaden has pointed out, referenda reduce highly complex issues to a simple yes/no answer. In a cultural sense, they “dumb down” the voters.

Moreover, voting “yes” often means accepting the word of the political elite’s saying, in effect, “trust us”. If voters wish to send a message to the elite that they are dissatisfied - for whatever reason, even one wholly distinct from the issue at stake - voting “no” is a convenient and simplistic solution. So the illusion of expressing the popular will is just that, an illusion.

Third, referenda reintroduce the tyranny of the majority, the very thing that modern democracies have sought to dilute by, for example, upgrading the role of civil society. Here again, careful analysis is needed. A great deal of politics is about making matters relatively easily intelligible, but this can readily cross the line into oversimplification, especially when sections of society will be clamouring for just that. The erosion of trust between political elites and society is also about the reluctance of the latter to come to terms with political complexity and the way in which both elites and media pander to the outdated desire for a golden age when choices were simple.

The trouble with that supposed golden age is that - whenever those who invoke it can be persuaded to identify it in terms of a definite period - majorities had no trouble in imposing their views on a minority. The evolution of various forms of lobbying, advocacy and pressure groups, and radical movements since the 1960s and 1970s is precisely about giving otherwise silent groups a voice. Referenda suppress that. It is quite plausible that a referendum on, say, recriminalising homosexuality or reintroducing the death penalty would gain a majority in several European nation-states. It is unlikely that the more vocal protagonists of “the people” expressing its view in this way would approve. Indeed, supporters of referenda as the articulation of the popular will are seldom if ever called upon to define what is a proper topic to be decided by “the people” and what is not. That too is a part of the easy ride the referendum receives in modern democracy (or, to be more precise, in a surrogate for democracy).

Fourth, referenda offer power without responsibility, in that voters can confront elites without having to face the consequences of their action. At their heart, referenda provide an opportunity for ad hoc coalitions that never have to worry about the outcome. The far left and far right coming together in France in the May 2005 referendum on the European Union’s constitutional treaty was a case in point; the two sides could never have governed together, but they could operate as a spoiler. Something similar was in evidence in Ireland in the Lisbon-treaty vote, where rightwing Catholics made common cause with leftwingers suspicious of Europe. The irony of this is that an ad hoc coalition of this kind can focus on a single issue and need never on any single occasion assume responsibility for the power that it wields.
The one-way street:

Referenda have unintended consequences in that they introduce new political actors into the system together with fresh lines of polarisation, often around issues that (regardless of the new actors’ demands) have no straightforward solution. This can also introduce and legitimate potentially destructive discourses - accusations of “sell-out” and “betrayal”, for example - that gain credibility through being voiced by these “untainted” political actors.

Besides, the task of the negative campaigners tends to be simpler than that of the supporters - they only have to argue: “if in doubt, say no”. This was much in evidence in Ireland’s referendum campaign. For all practical purposes it left the supporters of the “yes” camp having to prove their credibility, if not actually their innocence. And once a “no” campaign has won, it cannot be blamed, as it immediately evaporates, once again leaving the (elected) elite with the problem of what to do next. The organisers of “no” campaigns themselves never have to face an election.

When referenda are held on questions to do with the future of Europe, there is a further generally unidentified twist to the story. European integration operates simultaneously with three different sets of actors - the European Union, its institutions and elites; the national elites; and the supposed European demos. These three do not really connect very much. There is some connection between the EU and the national elites, but the linkage between the EU and its demos is very weak and is generally felt to be weak.

It is this political gap that provides the opportunity for negative campaigners in European matters - they believe that they can hold “their own” national political elites to account for European commitments, something not possible at the European level, largely because identification with that level does not exist.

This is the democratic deficit that must be addressed. But referenda, far from overcoming that deficit, actually intensify it. Accountability and responsibility, after all, have to be a two-way process to work at all. Referenda operate only in one direction and, for that reason, are not an appropriate or a democratically sustainable instrument in European matters.
Also by George Schőpflin in openDemocracy:

“Israel-Lebanon: a battle over modernity” (8 August 2005)

“Putin’s anti-globalisation strategy” (10 July 2006)

“Hungary: country without consequences” (22 September 2006)

“Hungary’s cold civil war (14 November 2006)

“The European Union’s troubled birthday” (23 March 2007)

Russia’s reinvented empire (3 May 2007)

Turkey’s crisis and the European Union (23 July 2007)

The new Russia: a model state (27 February 2008)

The following is from today, Friday, June 13th  unnews at un.org
Subject: UN DAILY NEWS DIGEST.

It Deals with the LATEST UN CLIMATE CHANGE TALKS END WITH CALLS FOR SPEEDIER NEGOTIATIONS.

If you are not a total fool - this means that no achievement what-so-ever has been reported. The message says:

“The latest round of United Nations-sponsored global climate change talks ended today in Bonn, Germany, with calls to step up the pace of negotiations in the run up to next year’s crucial summit in Copenhagen.

‘We now have a clearer understanding among governments on what countries would ultimately like to see written into a long-term agreement to address climate change,’ said Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). ‘But with a little more than a year to go to Copenhagen, the challenge to come to that agreement remains daunting,’ he added.

The talks, which brought together participants from 170 countries, led, among other things, to an agreement that practical technology transfer efforts would be scaled up – in particular for Africa, small island developing States and least developed countries.

‘What is ultimately required is a clever financial architecture to generate the money developing countries will need to green their economies and adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change,’ Mr. de Boer said.

Two further rounds of UN-sponsored negotiations will take place this year in Ghana and Poland.

A further series of major UNFCCC negotiating sessions are planned for 2009, culminating at the UN Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The aim of the negotiations is to create a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, on greenhouse gas emissions reduction.”

————–

So, back to what we said since the beginning of this year - unless in the November 2008 Presidential elections in the US there is finally a President elect that cares about bringing the US back to a World Leadership position, all UN inspired meetings on climate change are plain waste of time. For one thing, the all important Poznan COP 14 of the UNFCCC should be postponed to February 2009 from December 2008. We pity the CO2 emissions of bringing 5000 people to a do nothing event. The Accra, Ghana meeting could go on - there at least the Africans will have the chance to present their complaints. Who knows, perhaps former UNSG Kofi Annan will also show up and say something quotable?

Africa: Seeking a Common Position On Climate Change.

Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)
12 June 2008
Posted on IPS June, 13, 2008.
Newton Sibanda, Johannesburg.

The Twelfth African Ministerial Conference on Environment (AMCEN) ended five days of deliberations today with governments and civil society agreed — separately — on the importance of developing a common position for Africa at next year’s climate change talks in Copenhagen.

“Climate change is the defining human development and security issue of our generation. Those responsible should compensate the people whose livelihoods have been destroyed as a result,” said Ewah Eleri, director of the International Centre for Energy, Environment and Development in Nigeria.

Eleri was speaking at a joint press briefing on the sidelines of the conference by 20 civil society organisations (CSOs) from across the continent. The groups said Africa contributes least to greenhouse gas emissions, yet millions of Africans were being forced to daily deal with devastating impacts of climate change. Eleri said mandatory compensation must be paid to Africa by global polluters.

He was particularly critical of the suggestion that African governments should obtain loans to fund climate change adaptation. “You don’t burn someone’s house and then offer them a loan to rebuild it,” said Eleri. Omokaro Osayade, project officer for environmental group Friends of the Earth Nigeria agreed. “Just as Africa is emerging from a horrible debt trap, we could be re-indebted by developed countries and told to use loans to deal with the horrible damage that has been done to us. We are opposed to re-indebting of the African people by way of climate adaptation loans.”

The CSOs called on developed countries to contribute at least one percent of their gross domestic product to the climate change adaptation fund. It is estimated that at least $1 billion is needed to help Africa adapt to climate change.
{We find this amount as ridiculously low when compared with the trillion that the Iraqi oil cost the US -www.SustainabiliTank.info}

Environmental groups raised several key issues for African governments to address such as the failure of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to deliver the benefits promised to African countries. They said that the CDM simply allows rich countries to continue polluting in exchange for funding projects in developing countries.

They also identified a need for investment in affordable renewable energy technologies so that African states can develop their economies with low carbon emissions, and called for precautionary regulations to ensure that the development of biofuels does not threaten food security in Africa.

Inside the conference proper:

The formal outcome of the conference was in some ways more circumspect. African environment ministers agreed to establish a work programme with clear milestones for the development of a common position. Delegates proposed that an African expert panel on climate change be formed, on which senior officials will work in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme, the New Economic Partnership for African Development secretariat and the Commission of the African Union to define African focal points for the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Algeria will host the first meeting of the panel in October 2008; and a special session of environment ministers to adopt a final common position at the end of June 2009 in the margins of the 13th African Union Summit. { ?? }

The conference proposed that Africa should seek agreement on a future global emissions reduction regime under which all developed countries would by 2020 reduce their emissions to 35-40 percent below 1990 levels, and by 2050 have cut emissions dramatically to between 5 and 10 percent of the 1990 baseline. These emissions targets are what is believed to be necessary to stabilise the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere — the level which scientists at the influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate global warming will cause no more than a 2 degrees celsius change in global average temperature and thus avoid catastrophic effects.

“The Bali Action Plan and Bali Roadmap offered Africa the opportunity to build consensus on the complex issues of climate change and sustainable development, to the benefit of the continent,” said South Africa’s environment minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk. He succeeds the Republic of Congo’s Environment minister, André Okombi Salissa, as chair of AMCEN for the next two years.

“We will ensure that we go to the negotiations united because that is what we want as Africans to be united. A lot of countries in Africa have already committed themselves to cutting carbon emissions by 2050. We want developed countries to commit themselves to the 2025 emission targets,” van Schalkwyk said.

This is a step also towards the setting of an Eastern border for the EU.

Poland and Sweden to pitch ‘Eastern Partnership’ idea

By Philippa Runner, May 22, 2008.

Poland and Sweden are to unveil joint proposals for a new eastern Europe policy at an EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels on Monday (26 May), in a mini-version of France’s “Mediterranean Union.” The “Eastern Partnership” envisages a multinational forum between the EU-27 and neighbouring states Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Polish press agency PAP reports. {This list amounts to the old GUAM States + Armenia}

The forum would aim to negotiate visa-free travel deals, free trade zones for services and agricultural products and strategic partnership agreements with the five countries.

It would also launch smaller, bilateral projects on student exchange, environmental protection and energy supply, but would avoid the controversial topic of EU membership perspectives.

Dictatorship Belarus could join at a technical and expert-level only. Russia would also be invited to cooperate on local initiatives, involving the Kaliningrad enclave for example.

Unlike the grander Mediterranean club, the eastern set-up would not have its own secretariat but would be run by the European Commission and financed from the 2007 to 2013 European neighbourhood policy budget. A commission official would be appointed as its “special coordinator.”
Following the foreign ministers’ debate, Warsaw hopes to secure formal approval at the EU summit in June and to start detailed work on the “partnership” by the end of the year.

Warm reception:

Germany, the UK and the Netherlands have also voiced initial support, but Spain and Italy could prove problematic while Ukraine will have to be persuaded the partnership offers something better than the current EU neighbourhood package, Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza reports.

“The EU’s eastern policy is of interest to the whole EU,” Polish commissioner Danuta Hubner told the Rzeczpospolita newspaper. “The weakness of [previous] northern, eastern or southern European Union policies was that they existed only in the sphere of interest of member countries in those regions.”

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on www.CTV.ca

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Environmentalist David Suzuki gestures while speaking with CTV’s Question Period on Sunday, May 18, 2008.

Environment Minister John Baird appears on CTV’s Question Period on Sunday, May 18, 2008.

‘Instead of taxing things we want more of, like income . . . we shift taxes to things we don’t want, like greenhouses gases,’ Liberal environment critic David McGuinty explained on CTV’s Question Period, on Sunday, May 18, 2008.
Suzuki slams NDP, Tories, backs Dion’s carbon tax
Updated Sun. May. 18 2008 10:48 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Famed environmentalist David Suzuki has strongly backed Liberal leader Stephane Dion’s emerging carbon tax plan and slammed the NDP and Conservatives.

After hearing the NDP’s criticism of Dion’s plan, Suzuki said: “I’m really shocked with the NDP with this. I thought that they had a very progressive environmental outlook.”

“To oppose (the carbon tax plan), its just nonsense. It’s certainly the way we got to go,” he said Sunday on CTV’s Question Period.

While Dion has not fully revealed his plan, this week he said that he is proposing a revenue-neutral carbon tax, where the carbon tax is paired with a reduction in other taxes.

“Instead of taxing things we want more of, like income … we shift taxes to things we don’t want, like greenhouse gases,” Liberal environment critic David McGuinty explained on Question Period, while stressing the plan is not yet finalized.

NDP MP Peggy Nash said the NDP’s environment plan is not revenue neutral. She said her party wants a system where polluters pay and the money is put into “green solutions.”

Environment Minister John Baird told Question Period that Dion’s plan was “made on Bay Street” and is actually supported by big business and polluters.

“Mr. Dion wants to give some kind of licence to pollute and simply allow big business to buy their way out of this problem,” Baird said.

Baird touted the Conservatives’ environmental plan, saying that the Harper government would force big business into polluting less.

“Our plan we deliver an absolute 20 per cent reduction by 2020,” he said.

However, the Tories plan uses 2006 as the baseline year, which Baird failed to mention. The world generally uses 1990, the Kyoto Protocol’s baseline.

Most environmental groups have slammed the Conservatives’ environmental plan as ineffectual and say even if it works, it would still result in emissions that are eight per cent above Canada’s 2012 Kyoto target.

They also say the Tory plan relies on intensity targets, not absolute ones. Intensity targets mean that businesses must cut the amount of carbon that goes into each unit of production. However, that means total emissions could go up if output increased substantially.

Suzuki criticized Baird’s leadership, saying that the minister was working against and not with environmentalists.

Suzuki also said Ottawa politicians in general are too focused on the next election and not thinking of the future.

“Thank goodness for the United States or we’d be dead last (in the environment),” he said. “Let’s get on with hard targets and thinking more about what we are leaving our children and grandchildren.”

Suzuki mentioned that Swedes pay about carbon tax of $150 a tonne, while British Columbians are “yelling and screaming over a $10 tax.”

B.C introduced a carbon tax in February.