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The hyper-secretive club of the powerful that is claimed to rule the World (or at least a good deal of it) from the shadows, the Bilderberg Group, paid for the secret dinner where the new EU Council's President was nominated.
The new office will be in the hands of Herman Van Rompuy, the Christian-Democrat Prime Minister of Belgium. In spite of his low profile, he frequents the secret meetings of the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission, therefore he is an insider of the Western Imperial Senate (if not government) who will implement their obscurantist decissions.
Source: Peace Report (in Italian). Spanish version at Rebelión.
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5 comments:
The EU is not a superpower, but an alliance of several regional powers under the clout of the USA. It's the economic branch of NATO in Europe (like the NAFTA is in North America).
Otherwise I agree but immigrants here are rather from North Africa and Eastern Europe. Chinese too though.
Immigration will unavoidably increase as large parts of Africa collapse to the inefficiency of the post-colonial states and global warming generated drought.
But you can't ask people to have children with the current house prices and salaries, can you? Well, you can if you are the Pope, but not many will listen.
Anyhow Europeans have birth rates that are mostly fine (replacement rates), the problem is the huge birth rates of the past and the incredibly high life expectancy generated. Another problem is that the lack of legality of most immigrants causes huge insecurity and abuses in the labor market.
Another problem is that the lack of legality of most immigrants causes huge insecurity and abuses in the labor market..
The reason for that is the labour market in W.Europe is very tightly regulated with pay and conditions that are found only in Europe and America.
I would like to know how EU manufacturers are going to sell their products when the costs incurred so their workers enjoy EU pay and conditions will make their products uncompetitive.
Gabor Steingart, Der Speigel, 10/25/06
"What looks like a market economy in Asia, actually follows the rules of a type of society which former German chancellor Ludwig Erhard liked to call a "termite state."
In a termite state, it is the collective rather than the individual which sets the agenda. Tasks that serve the aims of society's leaders are assigned to the individual in a clandestine manner that is barely perceptible to outsiders. It is a state that encourages as much collective behavior as possible but only as much freedom as necessary.
We don't know what they feel, we don't know what they think and we have no way of guessing what they are planning. Indeed, this is what makes China a dark superpower.
Even if no one is prepared to say it outright, there are signs of a similar indifference to Western values all across Asia. But it is precisely that unspoken that separates the two worlds.
Free labor unions are neither vilified nor permitted. Lip service is paid to the environment as something that should be protected, but at the same time it is torn apart like a car in a wrecking yard. Child labor is condemned even as it is actively tolerated. And a whole range of laws exist to protect Western intellectual property, but those rules are seldom applied.
The Asian elite politely brush off everything that matters to us – the social framework surrounding daily working life, the idea of individual achievement and state-guaranteed fair competition. What we see as essential characteristics of a civilized society, they see as nothing more than bourgeois niceties.
The state (India) or party (China) is responsible for setting prices, promoting technology, ensuring provisions of raw materials, protecting industries and providing the impulse for just about any kind of economic or political activity.
Like the West, Asian societies also operate with a certain give and take.
The difference here, however, is that the state or the party, and not the individual, determines what is to be given or taken. The overwhelming success of their export industries is seen as proof that their way is the right one.
Americans and Europeans could, of course, respond tolerantly to this differing view of how a country should be run -- if, that is, free trade didn't result in severe side effects for the West.
But the reality is that, where there is no referee to ensure that everyone plays by the same rules, the West is encouraged, sometimes even forced, to make its own society a harsher place. In order to avoid losing business to low-wage countries, worker's councils are tamed, rules for environmental protection are watered down and responsibility for social welfare is gradually handed back down to families and individuals."
Why are they allowed to sell their products in the EU and US and erode our society, is it really in the elites interest to do that or are they just being taken for a ride by the termite states.
Reactionary mystification. Are you telling me that the West does not have the same lip service attitude towards the environment, for instance?
I acknowledge that there are differences between East and West in Eurasia, but among them there are those that can well be said to be Eastern virtues and Western defects. For example Chinese are more pragmatic, Westerners are more idealistic.
Also there's more than just China and Europe in this great continent and in the World. For instance, you have the USA: a fundamentalist society where the name of God is repeated once and again until it goes well beyond blasphemy (they even have that is something as repulsive and vilifying as paper money!) and instead you have a secularist and agnostic Europe that is much more like China in this aspect. You have India, the largest democracy, yet dragged by a feudalist system reinforced by British imperial domination. You have Russia, which has only slipped to hell since they abandoned socialism. You have the Muslims, which are very similar to the Gringos in their fundamentalism but among them you have secularist countries like Turkey and even advanced agnostic countries like Albania, and you have fundamentalist regimes, Franco-style, in Saudia, Iran, Egypt and most of the other West Asian and North African states. These regimes have been imposed from outside in most cases anyhow and do not represent the will of the people in any case.
It's a rich and diverse cultural background. And not just the alleged republican-imperial dichotomy, that is more a tribal-civilized one in fact.
Yes, we Europeans are just newcomers to civilization. And this is even more true of Northern Europe. Someone said that Britain would have never been able to experience the industrial revolution would it not be for its feudal underdevelopment, that allowed a good deal of post-tribal egalitarism.
Who knows which is the country or countries that will be the "Britain" of the eco-socialist revolution? My bet is Brazil but nothing is for sure.
As for EU, we'd be better if we would only trade with those countries that have similar labor and environmental standards. Otherwise we should tax their imports heavily, heavier the less respectful to human rights and nature they are (up to the point of total blockade).
We should collectivize the industry and the land and start producing only for our own needs and not for the wealth of few. But while we get paid for not protesting, we will not make any change. Only when the welfare system falls Europeans will react. Then you will know an era has reached its end.
Brazil eco socialist
They have a lot of untouched land and the that's a temptation dificult to resist for enterprising Brazilians, the government well know if they really tried to stop the loggers and farmers clearing the rainforest they'll be against the will of the people. Brazil has established a market for ethanol but how ecologicaly freindy is ethanol really
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