EU Laws

EU Commission outlines plans to strengthen privacy law | Pinsent Masons LLP

2010-02-03T23:07:00.001+01:00

EU Commission outlines plans to strengthen privacy law | Pinsent Masons LLP

"The European Commission is planning to beef up the Data Protection Directive, strengthening the enforcement of the EU law and including introducing new demands that technologies and processes include 'privacy by design'.
advert: Pinsent Masons Data Protection and Freedom of Information Advice Lines

The Directive is implemented in the UK by the Data Protection Act and governs the use that can be made of people's personal data."

Changes to EUR-Lex, Official Journal of the European Union (EU), Legislative Acts, New Numbering in Treaties : EUR-Lex Newsletter 8/1/2010

2010-02-03T22:46:00.003+01:00

The EUR-Lex Newsletter 8/1/2010 : Access to European Union Law contains important information about changes to EUR-Lex, to the Official Journal of the European Union, to a distinction introduced between legislative and non-legislative acts, and reference to the new numbering of the 'Treaty on European Union' and the 'Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union' as per the Lisbon Treaty. EUR-Lex writes:

"The EUR-Lex website has been harmonized with the other websites of the Publications Office....

From first January 2010 the structure of the Official Journal is adapted in order to take account of the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon....

In particular a distinction between 'Legislative acts' (L I) and 'Non-legislative acts' (L II) has been introduced in conformity with the Treaty of Lisbon....

Articles, sections, chapters, titles and parts of the 'Treaty on European Union' and of the 'Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union' are renumbered (Treaty of Lisbon article 5 and Annex)."

For more details, see the Newsletter.

EUR-Lex : Free Access to European Union EU Law : Official Journal, Treaties, Legislation, Case Law, Legislative Proposals

2010-02-03T22:42:00.000+01:00

EUR-Lex

"EUR-Lex provides direct free access to European Union law. Here you can consult the Official Journal of the European Union as well as the treaties, legislation, case-law and legislative proposals. You can also use the extensive search facilities available on EUR-Lex."

Update of the Paul, Weiss Reference Guide to U.S., European (EU) & Global Legislative and Regulatory Measures to Deal with the Financial Credit Crisis

2009-05-14T21:39:00.000+02:00

Paul, Weiss has just issued a comprehensive updated edition (May 6, 2009) of A Reference Guide to the Financial Crisis Rescue Efforts, such as are being taken via legislative and regulatory measures in the United States, Europe (European Union, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Ireland, The Netherlands, & Other European Countries) and also on a Coordinated Global basis. As written at the 124-page Guide:

"In view of the multifaceted and evolving nature of the U.S. government’s response to the financial crisis, we have developed this reference guide to the principal regulatory programs and initiatives that have been announced to date. The guide summarizes the U.S. Treasury programs implemented under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the administration’s Financial Stability Plan and other key programs implemented by the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The guide also summarizes the principal actions taken by European governments and the G-20 in response to the global credit crisis. This guide should be read in conjunction with the update alerts and other materials posted on our web site portal dedicated to the financial crisis."

View the full text of the PWFCRG.

France Defies European Union and Passes Controversial Anti-Piracy Three Strikes and You're Out Creation and Internet Law Against Illegal File-Sharing

2009-05-12T22:00:00.000+02:00

The French National Assembly of the Fifth French Republic, the lower legislative chamber in the bicameral Parliament of France, has passed the "three strikes and you're out" anti-piracy "Creation and Internet Law", also called the "Three-Strikes Law" against illegal file-sharing and it is expected that the upper house, the French Senate, will also pass the law tomorrow.

As written at ZeroPaid.com:

"Today the French National Assembly formally passed the controversial “Creation and Internet” law by a narrow 296 to 233 margin.

The legislation, backed by President Nicolas Sarkozy, and surprisingly defeated in the same body last month, calls for the creation of the Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Oeuvres et la Protection des droits sur Internet (HADOPI), a new govt agency whose task it would be to sanction those accused of illegal file-sharing."

The law is controversial in the European Union because it directly defies efforts of the EU Parliament in recent weeks to make the Three Strikes Law illegal through telecom law amendments which make internet access a fundamental right of EU citizens. As reported by La Quadrature du Net:

" "A formidable campaign from the citizens put the issues of freedoms on the Internet at the center of the debates of the Telecoms Package. This is a victory by itself. It started with the declaration of commissioner Viviane Reding considering access to Internet as a fundamental right. The massive re-adoption of amendment 138/462 rather than the softer compromise negotiated by rapporteur Trautmann with the Council is an even stronger statement. These two elements alone confirm that the French ‘three strikes’ scheme, HADOPI, is dead already." explains Jérémie Zimmermann, co-founder of La Quadrature du Net."

It thus has all the makings of an upcoming confrontation between the French Parliament and the Parliament of the European Union.

The passage by the French Assembly had an immediate reaction in the United Kingdom, as reported by Nigel Kendall, Technology Editor at the Times Online, who writes that the UK is the latest country in Europe to formulate a strategy to combat illegal online file-sharing:

"A group representing the UK's creative industries today called for the UK government to intervene to prevent the spread of illegal file-sharing of copyrighted content such as music and film.

The group, a loose coalition that includes The British Phonographic Industry and the Film Distributors' Association, as well as trades unions such as the National Union of Journalists and the Musicians' Union, issued a joint statement following a meeting in London on May 12."

There is in the long term of course no question that the days of illegal fire-sharing are numbered, since large parts of the world economy are built on intellectual property rights which have to be defended. The French law is taking the logical approach by providing for the tracing of illegal file-sharers and a three-strikes and you are out policy toward them, leading to the cutting of their Internet connections. As written at the Hollywood Reporter:

"The "Creation and Internet" law, nicknamed the "Hadopi" because it involves the the creation of a Hadopi (High Authority for the Broadcast of Content and the Protection of Rights on the Internet) committee, authorizes the tracing of illegal downloaders through their IP addresses."

Once illegal downloaders are faced with the consequence that their Internet connections will be cut off, illegal file-sharing will drop quickly since the average citizen will not want to take that risk and will thus no longer engage in what he or she knows to be illegal file-sharing, but which currently has little risk of detection or penalties.

We presume that a compromise political and legal solution will be the recognition of Internet access as a fundamental right of EU citizens, provided that they do not engage in illegal activities via that very same Internet. We see no direct confrontation to be necessary here.

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2009-05-12T18:09:00.000+02:00

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Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands : Consumers are Angry with Governments, Institutions, and Economic Sectors but not Brands

2009-05-11T20:12:00.000+02:00

The brandz.com BrandZ Top 100 ranking of brands by brand value was created by Millward Brown Optimor to identify the world's most valuable brands by dollar value. Their 2009 Press Release regarding this year's ranking is found below:

"BRANDZ™ TOP 100 MOST VALUABLE GLOBAL BRANDS NOW WORTH $2 TRILLION

Google is the world’s first $100 billion brand, number one for the third year running

New York, New York, 29th April 2009 — the fourth annual BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking published today by Millward Brown Optimor reveals that brands sustain their value, despite the tough economic environment.

The BrandZ Top 100 ranking identifies the dollar value of brands. It does this by combining financial data with research on consumers and business-to-business users from BrandZ, the world’s largest brand equity study.

The value of the top 100 brands has held its value at $1.95 tn (a marginal increase of 1.7 percent). Google is number one with a value of $100 bn, Microsoft is number two at $76.2 bn, and Coca-Cola enters the top three for the first time at $67.6 bn....

There are 15 new brands entering the ranking this year. Pampers is the highest entrant at no. 31, followed by Nintendo (no.32) and VISA (no.36). Trends identified from this year’s rankings are:

Value — Brands that represent good value for money have done well, this is about quality as much as price, for example Wal-Mart (+19 percent), ALDI (+49 percent) and Auchan (+48 percent). H&M (+8 percent) is now the number one apparel brand.

Vice — People still reward themselves with little treats when money is tight. Brands such as McDonald’s (+34 percent), Marlboro (+33 percent) and Budweiser (+23 percent) have all done well.

At Home — Brands that can be experienced at home have shown strong growth. This includes home shopping: Amazon (+85 percent) and eBay (+16 percent); Coffee that can be prepared at home: Nespresso (+27 percent) and Nescafe (+23 percent); and gaming — Nintendo jumped into the ranking for the first time at no. 32.

Wireless — The increased popularity of using the internet on the move through devices such as the iPhone and BlackBerry has led to huge increases for the mobile operators category as a whole, driven by demand for data services. Vodafone enters the top 10 for the first time this year (+45 percent)....

About Millward Brown

Millward Brown (www.millwardbrown.com) is one of the world's leading research agencies and is expert in effective advertising, marketing communications, media and brand equity research. Through the use of an integrated suite of validated research solutions — both qualitative and quantitative — Millward Brown helps clients build strong brands and services. Millward Brown has more than 75 offices in 48 countries. Millward Brown Optimor focuses on helping clients maximize the returns on their brand and marketing investments. Millward Brown is part of Kantar, WPP's insight, information and consultancy group.

Contacts

Outside of North America:

Miquet Humphryes
miquet.humphryes@uk.millwardbrown.com
+44 1926 826179

U.S. and Canada:

Lauren Raisl
lauren.raisl@millwardbrown.com
212-548-7221"

See the full report, where there are also lists of the Top 15 by Brand Contribution (Emotion), Top 10 by Brand Momentum (short-term growth prospects), top 20 Risers (greatest year-to-year value increase) and Newcomers to the Top 100 list.

There are top 10 lists by region:
Asia, Europe (including the UK), United Kingdom, and North America.

Featured Top 10 lists are also found for the following economic sectors:
Apparel, Beer, Bottled Water, Cars, Coffee, Fast Food, Financial Institutions, Gaming Consoles, Insurance, Luxury, Mobile Operators, Motor Fuel, Personal Care, Retail, Soft Drinks, Spirits, and Technology.

But perhaps the most interesting and significant list of all is the last one in the report, 10 Key Take Outs, of which we quote Number Four:

"4 Stay Positive

Consumers are angry – with government, at large institutions, with entire sectors. But they are not angry at your brand. Brand strength is stable over time. It is disrupted only when something new enters the market or when the brand upsets the relationship with consumers. It takes a lot to make that happen. A recent Millward Brown study of the financial sector revealed that consumers are likely to aim their current displeasure at the sector or at certain high-profile individuals. The displeasure consumers feel, however, does not seem to dramatically alter their
experience with their individual brand."

Montblanc Trademark for Stationery Goods Not Protected against Mont Blanc Tobacco Products in Latvia : Latvian Supreme Court Senate Decision : EU

2009-05-11T14:05:00.000+02:00

Class 46 summarizes a note written at the World Trademark Review by Valentina Sergeyeva of Strahlberg & Partners in Riga, Latvia, relating to a decision of the Senate of the Latvian Supreme Court concerning a "Mont Blanc" tobacco and cigarette trademark registration application by the Polish company Zaklady Tytoniowe w Lubline SA, which was opposed by Montblanc-Simplo GmbH, now owned by the luxury goods conglomerate Richemont, as holders of the famous MontBlanc pen and stationery trademark. Opposition to registration of the mark was dismissed on the grounds that there were already other goods named Mont Blanc (e.g. Mont Blanc car roof racks in Sweden, the UK, Ireland and Germany) and there was no reason to think that Latvian consumers would confuse marks which applied to completely different sets of products, i.e. stationery items vs. tobacco products and cigarettes.

See also MONT BLANC TOBACCO CO FRANCE LIMITED

Jānis Rozenfelds at Rozenfelds & Partners in his January 21, 2008 article at Mondaq titled Latvia: Court System In Latvia explains the current Latvian judicial system for those who are interested.

Happy Mother's Day with a Maywood Medley and Mother How Are You Today?

2009-05-10T00:35:00.000+02:00

Mother How Are You Today? Medley by Maywood. Happy Mother's Day!

See more of MayWood.

OECD Snapshot Country Statistical Profiles for 2009 are NOW Available for its 30 Member Countries plus Six Large Non-Member Economies

2009-05-08T20:45:00.000+02:00

Do NOT believe everything you read in the media. To fully understand this world, it pays to look at hard facts available online.

In this vein, one should now look at the Country Statistical Profiles for 2009 which have just become available from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). As written at the OECD:

"The Country Statistical Profiles provide, for each of the 30 member countries, and, to the extent possible, for the 6 big non-member economies (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russian Federation and South Africa) and the accession countries Chile, Estonia, Israel and Slovenia, a broad selection of indicators, illustrating the demographic, social, economic and environmental developments. The user can easily compare each indicator for a country with those of other OECD countries."

Current country profiles are available for Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Brazil, Chile, China, Estonia, India, Indonesia, Israel, Russian Federation, Slovenia, and South Africa.

The OECD informs us that these statistics are a STAT EXTRACT for each country since:

"[t]his statistical profile, updated yearly, is a snapshot of data selected from more than 40 statistical databases available on SourceOECD, our online library. The red i's in the second column provide links to the sources of the data, where more up-to-date data and longer time series can be found."

The OECD stats are quite a bit more soberly realistic than a lot of the sensational hype pandered in newspapers, radio and television.

Travel to Latvia : An Exceptional Video Visiting Card from the Latvian Institute : Via the Baltic Online Media Store (BOMS)

2009-04-30T12:05:00.000+02:00

Seen originally at the Baltic Online Media Store (BOMS)

Latvijas vizītkarte - Sounds Like LATVIA (2009) - Latvijas Institūts

Full Text of April 23, 2009 Press Release of the European Commission regarding Germany's Dodging of its CAP Disclosure Duty

2009-04-29T13:03:00.000+02:00

Here is the full text - in English, French and German - of the April 23, 2009 Press Release of the European Commission regarding Germany's dodging of its disclosure duty to publish a list of all recipients of all forms of EU agricultural and rural development funds for each financial year.

See the original EU links - IP/09/632 Date: 23/04/2009
Commission insists that all Member States publish recipients of CAP payments by 30^th April, as set out in EU law

HTML:	EN FR DE
PDF:	EN FR DE
DOC:	EN FR DE

ENGLISH

"IP/09/632
Brussels, 23 April 2009
Commission insists that all Member States publish recipients of CAP payments by 30th April, as set out in EU law

The European Commission today expressed its surprise and disappointment with suggestions that Germany may not publish the list of beneficiaries of Common Agricultural Policy payments by 30th April 2009, as required by EU law. "We are very surprised. Germany voted in favour of this proposal and the legal situation is clear. Germany is obliged to implement this legislation. If they do suspend publication, we will react accordingly," said Mariann Fischer Boel, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development. "This could mean starting infringement proceedings against Germany. This is taxpayers' money, so it is very important that people know where it is being spent. Transparency should also improve the management of these funds, by reinforcing public control of how the money is used. Only in this way can we guarantee an informed debate about the future of the Common Agricultural Policy."

The new Financial Regulation, adopted in 2006, sets out the principle that Member States have to ensure the publication of a list of all recipients of all forms of EU agricultural and rural development funds for each financial year. A Commission Regulation sets out the details of how this publication will be carried out.

It provides that each Member State shall publish the information on a website which allows people to search for the beneficiaries by name, municipality, amounts received (and the currency concerned) or a combination of these three criteria and to extract the information as a single set of data. It requires Member States to inform the beneficiaries that their data will be made public and that they enjoy the rights accorded to them by EU data protection rules, thus ensuring that the system complies with the requirements of data protection. Recipients of money from the Rural Development fund have already been required to be published since September 2008. Germany has also published this data.

German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner has suggested "a temporary suspension" of the publication of this information, citing data protection concerns.

After careful examination, the Commission cannot agree to this suspension. Questions related to data protection were taken into consideration during the development of the legislation, which was backed by the Council. Germany itself voted in favour. EU regulations are directly applicable in all Member States, and the transparency rules are therefore binding in their entirety.

Neither the Member States nor the Commission may suspend the enforcement and application of these rules as long as they have not been declared invalid. Only the Court of Justice is empowered to declare an EU regulation to be invalid.

In this case, since an action is pending before the Court for a preliminary ruling on the validity of the EU transparency rules, the Commission must refrain from taking any action that could be perceived as prejudging the Court's future ruling.

As Guardian of the Treaties, the Commission will treat all Member States in the same way and ensure that transparency rules are fully enforced in the whole EU from 30 April 2009.

FRENCH

"IP/09/632
Bruxelles, le 23 avril 2009
La Commission insiste pour que les États membres publient la liste des bénéficiaires des paiements de la PAC pour le 30 avril, comme le prévoit la législation communautaire

La Commission a exprimé aujourd’hui sa surprise et sa déception à l’annonce que l’Allemagne pourrait ne pas publier la liste des bénéficiaires des paiements de la politique agricole commune pour le 30 avril 2009, comme l’exige la législation communautaire. «Nous sommes très surpris», a déclaré Madame Mariann Fischer Boel, membre de la Commission chargé de l’agriculture et du développement rural; l’Allemagne a voté en faveur de cette proposition et, sur le plan juridique, la situation est claire: elle a l’obligation d’appliquer la législation correspondante. Si elle suspend effectivement la publication de la liste, nous prendrons les mesures qui s’imposent. Cela pourrait signifier le lancement d’une procédure d’infraction contre l’Allemagne. Il s’agit de l’argent du contribuable et il est donc particulièrement important que les gens sachent ce qu’on en fait. La transparence devrait aussi améliorer la gestion de ces fonds, grâce à un contrôle public renforcé de leur utilisation. C’est la seule manière de garantir un débat éclairé sur l’avenir de la politique agricole commune.»

Le nouveau règlement financier, adopté en 2006, établit que les États membres doivent garantir la publication pour chaque exercice financier d’une liste de tous les bénéficiaires de toutes les formes d’aides dans les domaines de l’agriculture et du développement rural octroyées par l’UE. Les modalités de cette publication sont fixées dans un règlement de la Commission.

Celui-ci prévoit que chaque État membre publie les informations sur un site web permettant au public de rechercher les bénéficiaires par nom, commune, montants reçus (et devise correspondante) ou en combinant ces trois critères et d’extraire les renseignements correspondants sous la forme d’un ensemble de données unique. Le règlement impose aux États membres d’informer les bénéficiaires que leurs données seront publiées et qu’ils bénéficient des droits qui leur sont accordés par la réglementation communautaire en matière de protection des données; cette disposition garantit la conformité du système aux exigences de protection des données. Depuis septembre 2008, il est obligatoire de publier la liste des bénéficiaires de subventions du Fonds pour le développement rural. Ces données ont aussi été publiées par l’Allemagne, mais son ministre de l’agriculture, Madame Ilse Aigner, a proposé une «suspension temporaire» de la publication en raison de considérations relatives à la protection des données.

Après mûre réflexion, la Commission a conclu qu’elle ne pouvait pas donner son accord. Les questions de protection des données ont été prises en considération lors de l’élaboration de la législation, qui a reçu l’appui du Conseil. L’Allemagne elle-même a marqué son approbation. Les règlements de l’Union européenne sont directement applicables dans tous les États membres et les règles en matière de transparence sont donc contraignantes dans leur intégralité.

Tant que la validité de ces règles n’a pas été annulée, ni les États membres, ni la Commission ne sauraient donc en suspendre l’application ou la mise en œuvre, et seule la Cour de justice est habilitée à invalider un règlement de l’Union européenne.

Étant donné qu’en l’espèce, une action a été engagée devant la Cour, qui est appelée à rendre un arrêt préjudiciel sur la validité de la réglementation communautaire en matière de transparence, la Commission doit s’abstenir de toute action susceptible d’être perçue comme préjugeant de la future décision de la Cour.

Gardienne des traités, la Commission entend agir de manière identique vis-à-vis de tous les États membres et veiller à ce que, dans toute l’Union européenne, la réglementation en matière de transparence soit intégralement mise en œuvre à la date du 30 avril 2009."

GERMAN

IP/09/632
Brüssel, den 23. April 2009
GAP-Zahlungen: Kommission besteht auf Veröffentlichung der Empfängerdaten durch alle Mitgliedstaaten bis 30. April 2009

Die Europäische Kommission zeigte sich heute überrascht und enttäuscht über Hinweise, dass Deutschland die Liste der Empfänger von GAP-Zahlungen möglicherweise nicht wie im EU-Recht vorgesehen bis 30. April 2009 veröffentlichen will. „Wir sind wirklich überrascht. Deutschland hat für diesen Vorschlag gestimmt, und die Rechtslage ist klar. Deutschland ist verpflichtet, die Vorschriften umzusetzen. Sollte es die Veröffentlichung dieser Daten tatsächlich aussetzen, werden wir entsprechend reagieren“, kommentierte Kommissarin Fischer Boel, zuständig für Landwirtschaft und ländliche Entwicklung. „Dies könnte bedeuten, dass ein Verstoßverfahren gegen Deutschland eingeleitet wird. Hier geht es um das Geld der Steuerzahler, und deswegen müssen die Bürger wissen, wohin dieses Geld fließt. Mehr Transparenz dürfte auch die Verwaltung der Mittel verbessern, weil die öffentliche Kontrolle der Mittelverwendung gestärkt wird. Nur so kann es eine sachlich fundierte Diskussion über die Zukunft der Gemeinsamen Agrarpolitik geben."

Nach der neuen Haushaltsordnung von 2006 müssen die Mitgliedstaaten jedes Jahr eine angemessene nachträgliche Veröffentlichung der Informationen über die Empfänger von Haushaltsmitteln sicherstellen. Die Einzelheiten dieser Veröffentlichung sind in einer Durchführungsverordnung der Kommission geregelt.

Nach dieser Verordnung müssen die Informationen von den Mitgliedstaaten auf einer speziellen Website veröffentlicht werden und für die Nutzer über eine Suchfunktion zugänglich sein, mit der Name, Gemeinde und erhaltene Beträge (in der betreffenden Währung) oder eine Kombination dieser drei Kriterien abgefragt und die Informationen als ein Datensatz entnommen werden können. Außerdem müssen die Mitgliedstaaten die Empfänger im vorhinein über die Veröffentlichung ihrer Daten informieren und sie auf ihre Rechte im Rahmen der EU-Datenschutzbestimmungen hinweisen, womit sichergestellt ist, dass das System den Datenschutzerfordernissen entspricht. Die Daten über die Empfänger von Mitteln aus dem Europäischen Landwirtschaftsfonds für die Entwicklung des ländlichen Raums wurden erstmals bereits im September 2008 und auch von Deutschland veröffentlicht.

Die deutsche Landwirtschaftsministerin Ilse Aigner hat nun unter Hinweis auf datenschutzrechtliche Bedenken darum gebeten, die Verpflichtung zur Veröffentlichung dieser Daten „auszusetzen“.

Nach sorgfältiger Prüfung kam die Kommission jedoch zu dem Schluss, dass sie einer Aussetzung nicht zustimmen kann. Die Datenschutzproblematik wurde während des Legislativverfahrens berücksichtigt, der Rat hat die Vorschriften genehmigt, Deutschland hat für die Vorschriften gestimmt. Die Gemeinschaftsverordnungen gelten unmittelbar in allen Mitgliedstaaten, und die Transparenzvorschriften sind in allen ihren Teilen verbindlich.

Weder die Mitgliedstaaten noch die Kommission können die Durchsetzung und Anwendung dieser Vorschriften aussetzen, solange diese nicht für ungültig erklärt worden sind. Und nur der Gerichtshof ist befugt, eine Gemeinschaftsvorschrift für ungültig zu erklären.

Da beim Gerichtshof ein Vorabentscheidungsersuchen zur Gültigkeit der Transparenzvorschriften anhängig ist, muss die Kommission außerdem jede Handlung unterlassen, die als Vorgriff auf die Entscheidung des Gerichtshofs gewertet werden könnte.

Als Hüterin der Verträge wird die Kommission alle Mitgliedstaaten gleich behandeln und sicherstellen, dass die Transparenzvorschriften ab dem 30. April 2009 in allen Mitgliedstaaten in vollem Umfang durchgesetzt werden."

European Union EU Common Agricultural Policy CAP Susbsidies also include Egregious Non-Farm Aid to Multinational Corporations

2009-04-28T22:07:00.000+02:00

With reference to our previous posting on EU farm subsidies, we should point out that CAP payments made by the EU are not limited to farms and that European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) susbsidies also include Non-Farm Aid to multinational corporations, for example, in the form of notorious so-called export refunds, which involve the transfer of billions of euros to the bank accounts of large food-related companies.

MDC Datum explains how export refunds work (see also CAOBISCO on this topic). In the first instance, prices, e.g. for sugar, are kept artificially higher in the European Union than what world prices would warrant, by implementing various means of "intervention" (this used to be called "price fixing"), thus already greatly benefitting the relevant companies in the first instance.

Then, when these same companies sell their (increasingly?) surplus production not to the EU, but on the world market, the EU by a system of so-called "export refunds" makes up the difference in price between the "world market price" and the fixed artifically-created "intervention price" which prevails in the European Union for the given commodity. This difference is paid to the exporting company! Now there is a game to be involved in. The European Union system of export refunds thus can be regarded as one of the greatest scams ever invented for the beneficiaries of this "sure thing" system.

As written by Felicity Lawrence at the The Guardian on December 8, 2005 in Multinationals, not farmers, reap biggest rewards in Britain's share of CAP payouts:

"[C]ampaign groups such as Oxfam argue that the CAP has given a handful of monopoly multinational companies fixed prices and guaranteed markets while encouraging excess production. Just six sugar traders, for example, control most of the EU sugar market and between them have been able to claim EU export subsidies amounting to between €1.2bn and €1.4bn annually. Surpluses can be dumped on international markets at subsidised rates and thus keep world prices artificially low, further benefiting the multinational companies. "Stripped to its essential, the sugar regime is a system of corporate welfare...[it] sanctions what is effectively a [legal] cartel", according to Oxfam." [link and emphasis added by LawPundit]

Read in this regard Oxfam's Briefing Paper 34 Milking the CAP: How Europe’s dairy regime is devastating livelihoods in the developing world, which observed in commenting on the year 2001 that :

"European citizens are supporting the dairy industry to the tune of €16 billion a year. This is equivalent to more than $2 per cow per day – half the world’s people live on less than this amount. EU surpluses of milk and milk products are dumped on world markets using costly export subsidies, which destroy people’s livelihoods in some of the world’s poorest countries. Dairy processing and trading companies are the direct beneficiaries of these subsidies. Meanwhile, many small-scale European dairy farmers are struggling to make ends meet. Oxfam is calling for an immediate end to EU dairy export dumping and for agricultural support to target small-scale farmers."

Although export refunds for dairy products were discontinued by the European Commission in 2007 in part because of the understandable swell of protest against these clear monopoly scams, it is now reported a mere two years later that export refunds for dairy products are again to be reinstituted, as we read in the European Parliament on March 12, 2009 in Strasbourg in the ANNEX (Written answers) - QUESTIONS TO THE COMMISSION:

"Question n° 56 de Alain Hutchinson (H-0122/09 )
Objet: Subventions à l'exportation
H-0122/09

En 2001, l'UE s'était engagée à diminuer progressivement les subventions à l'exportation de ses produits agricoles, pour les supprimer d'ici à 2013. Cependant pour 2006-2007, l'UE a encore dépensé 2,5 milliards d'euros en subventions à l'exportation. Si ce montant représente une diminution, il demeure encore beaucoup trop élevé. Dans un contexte international marqué par la crise alimentaire et la flambée des prix agricoles, il serait pourtant nécessaire d'avancer beaucoup plus rapidement vers la suppression de telles subventions qui constituent un dumping intenable pour des millions de petits producteurs des pays en développement.

La Commission peut-elle préciser, chiffres et calendrier à l'appui, quelles sont ses intentions en la matière?

The re-introduction of EC export refunds for dairy products is a response to a dramatic 60% decrease in world market prices over recent months, a result from shrinking demand. And contrary to the current situation in the EU, dairy production increases in certain competing exporting third countries such as New Zealand, Brazil and the United States.

These export refunds have therefore to be considered as a safety-net and certainly not as a setback of the course set out in the 2003 Common Agricultural Policy reform and the subsequent Health Check.

The EU has always respected its international commitments on export refunds and will continue to do so.

The Ministerial Declaration adopted at the Hong Kong World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Conference on 13-18 December 2005 lays down that: "We agree to ensure the parallel elimination of all forms of export subsidies and disciplines on all export measures with equivalent effect to be completed by the end of 2013." The EC as WTO member will respect its political commitments in the declaration, including on the deadline for the elimination of all forms of export subsidies. This commitment however is conditioned on the successful completion of the Doha Round.

The EC remains committed to concluding the Doha Round and hope that an agreement can be achieved during 2009. Following an agreement the EC will specify in its schedule the details on the elimination of export refunds by 2013."

In 2006/2007 the EC notified to the WTO the spending of €1.4 billion in export refunds and not € 2.5 billion. This is less than one fifth of the agreed WTO ceiling for export subsidies."

According to the Farmers Guardian, the following non-farm CAP payments were e.g. made in 2004/2005 (the very fact that these numbers are not up to date anywhere online indicates that people are trying to hide what is at heart a tremendous scam system, benefitting only large vested interests):

"1. Tate & Lyle Europe £88,703,757.25
2. C Czarnikow Sugar £39,396,794.72
3. Tate & Lyle Europe £20,104,840.01
4. Fayrefield Foods Ireland £18,361,816.61
5. Tate & Lyle Citric Acid £15,243,922.59
6. Philpot Dairy Products £13,229,777.84
7. Meadow Foods £12,471,426.15
8. Milk Supplies £9,775,832.61
9. Dale Farm £8,616,911.24
10. Nestle UK £5,116,853.67
11. Meadow Foods £4,909,609.00
12. G's Growers £4,593,443.86
13. T M C dairies £3,100,963.74
14. Lakeland Dairies £2,938,066.39
15. KG Growers £2,380,753.40
16. Express Dairies Milk £2,270,698.41
17. Eilers & Wheeler Sales £2,149,003.87
18. Fruition APO £1,664,004.76
19. Humber Growers £1,644,222.60
20. Cargill plc Agricultural Division £1,478,833.50"

It is no wonder that the WTO has put pressure on the European Union to abandon these export refunds which are not only skewing world prices, but are also wrongfully filling the coffers of various EU multinational companies and their wealthy shareholders at EU taxpayer expense, taxpayers who not only are being forced to pay higher than world prices for the commodities that they themselves consume, but who in addition are also forced to pay to subsidize EU companies who are selling surplus commodities to the 3rd world nations at subsidized prices, thus undercutting 3rd world economies. It is a new "colonial-type" racket of immense scope.

What is particularly disturbing about CAP subsidies is that they are going straight out of the pockets of ordinary citizens into the pockets of large companies and landholders. This is nothing more than a modern form of feudalism as far as the paying EU taxpayer is concerned.

Both the UK and Germany, for example, pay more into the CAP pot than they get back, so that their ordinary citizens have every right to demand that this money go at least to deserving farmers either at home or in some of the other developing EU Member States. It is most surely not the intent of the EU populace to see their hard-earned monies being continuously plundered by wealthy institutions and individuals who already have more than enough.

There is also no excuse (according to 2006 stats at FarmSubsidy.Org) for large countries such as France WINNING €22 more per citizen per year in CAP subsidies than they put into the pot, whereas each citizen in the United Kingdom LOSES €22 in the deal, and in Germany each citizen even loses €42 in the deal. In 2007, according to FarmSubsidy.Org, the top three CAP recipients in France were BANKS! Why should citizens in the UK and Germany be subsidizing French banks, agribusiness and large multinational corporations?

Once again, we point a strong finger of guilt at all of those knowingly involved in this unprecedented and often clandestine scheme for the redistribution of money within the European Union. The very fact that information about CAP subsidy payments is extremely hard to obtain indicates clearly that those in the know also know that they are in the middle of operations which should best not see the light of day.

Jack Thurston at FarmSubsidy.Org refers to a Financial Times article on CAP by Alan Beattie, who tellingly wrote:

"People pushing for reform of the CAP say more pressure from inside the EU is needed. But the first problem is finding detailed information. For much of its history, the CAP has largely operated in the dark. Figures on how much each farmer receives have had to be painfully extracted from EU member governments by sustained campaigning and repeated requests under various national freedom of information acts."

We see this again clearly in Germany's reluctance this week to abide by EU law and to disclose the names of CAP recipients in the year 2009.

WHERE IS there evidence of the PROGRESS FORWARD so badly needed by the EU?

European Union Farm Subsidies of $55 Billion are 43% of EU Budget : Germany Refuses to Name Aid Recipients on Data Protection Grounds

2009-04-28T11:45:00.000+02:00

Feudalism is alive and well in Europe. It just has a very modern form of expression.

The really big money in the European Union financial scheme of things changes hands feudally between the lowly taxpayers and vested agricultural interests, mostly big agribusiness and large landowners. Just as in the United States, where the wealthiest factions of the country have been milking the economy for all it is worth, a similar process is at work in the European Union in transferring more and more money into the hands of those who already have it.

As reported by Valentina Pop at EUObserver, European Union farm subsidies currently total $55 billion per year, which accounts for 43% of the entire EU budget. Since EU budget funds come from the EU Member States in the form of a flat tax of ca. 1% of GDP, it is in fact the little guys who are once again paying the bill.

This can be seen from Richard Baldwin's analysis of agricultural aid to the UK in Who finances the Queen’s CAP payments? The CAP as a dooH niboR scheme [i.e. taking from the poor and giving to the rich in a reverse of Robin Hood, which is dooH niboR backwards - see Paul Krugman on Dooh Nibor Economics].

Baldwin may be writing in the year 2005 in The royalty of CAP madness, but nothing has changed in the intervening years. As written February 9, 2008 by Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor at the Independent in 'Fat cats' benefit from EU farming subsidies:

"The Queen and one of the richest men in London, the Duke of Westminster, are among the biggest winners from this year's payment of farm subsidies.

The Duke, who owns most of Mayfair and also Grosvenor Farms Limited, was paid £562,786, while the Duke of Marlborough, a member of the Churchill family, was paid £452,944 in subsidy for the Blenheim Farm Partnership based in Woodstock, Oxfordshire.

One of the largest payments went to the Mormon Church, which has become one of the biggest foreign landowners in English farming following a payment of £1.59m from the reformed Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The Queen's Sandringham Farms were paid £408,970 in subsidies. Half of the land is let to tenants and the rest is turned over to two studs for her racehorses, forestry and fruit farms which produce apples and juice for the Windsor farm shop."

The UK Parliament has also provided interesting figures. The House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 27 Jan 2009 (pt 0010) show the following top 10 recipients in the UK of EU farm aid:

"Jane Kennedy [holding answer 5 February 2009]: The following table lists the 10 individuals and/or organisations that received the highest subsidies available under all schemes under the common agricultural policy for the European financial year 2008, which runs from 16 October 2007 to 15 October 2008.

Individual/organisations
£
K G Growers	3,170,052.01
G's Growers	2,908,857.66
Farmcare Limited	2,641,415.83
The Berryworld Producer Organisation	1,943,996,51
Strutt and Parker Limited	1,493,340.64
The National Trust	1,348,898.74
Sir Richard Suttons Settled Estate	1,264,889.52
Lilburn Estates Farming Partnership	1,215,740.15
Blankley Estates Ltd	1,189,030.63
Fruition Producer Organisation Limited	1,186,619.38

"
We found the following information about these organizations online:

K G Growers has an annual turnover of £115 million.
G's Growers, according to Hoover's, had sales of $34.5 million in 2008.
Farmcare Limited is part of the Co-Operative Group (CWS) Limited, a co-op headquartered in Manchester, UK, with ca. 65000 employees and revenues of over £7000 million annually. This is the largest commercial farmer in Britain.
The Berryworld Producer Organisation are suppliers of berries to the major UK supermarkets (Tesco, Sainsbury's, etc.)
Strutt and Parker Farms cover more than 18,200 acres in Essex and Suffolk and are divided into six farms
The National Trust - in our opinion, they should get more
Sir Richard Suttons Settled Estate is 6500 acres and belongs to one of the UK's wealthiest persons
Lilburn Estates Farming Partnership covers nearly 28000 acres - in the year 2005 "5,450 acres of combinable crop, 5,285 acres of lowland grass, 155 acres of forage crops, 14,600 acres of hill and heather grouse moor and 2,300 acres of woodland. As well as a breeding and finishing sheep enterprise totalling 28,380 head, the unit's 3,068 cattle includes 1,134 suckler cows, 1,536 finishing cattle, 370 Stabiliser bred replacements, six continental stock bulls and 18 Stabiliser stock bulls."
Blankley Estates Ltd provides little information online but it even has its own proprietary 18-hole golf course (as a golfer, I am happy, but as an EU taxpayer, this is to my mind not a suffering farmer worthy of a CAP subsidy)
Fruition Producer Organisation Limited - Fruition PO Ltd is part of World Wide Fruit "one of the UK's largest fruit marketing companies"

Of course, none of these companies is to be blamed for obtaining subsidies if the EU laws permit them to do so. The fault is to be sought in Brussels, not in London, through whose incompetence billions of euros are being funneled into the bank accounts of those who least need the money.

As Valentina Pop now writes at Germany dodges disclosure of EU farm funds, to keep these kinds of payments to the rich out of the public eye, Germany has now ignored an EU law requiring full agricultural subsidy disclosure and has refused to name the German aid recipients on the grounds of "data protection", which is of course absolutely absurd from every possible legal viewpoint. As EUObserver writes:

"Claiming data protection issues, German agriculture minister Ilse Aigner on Wednesday recommended: "temporarily suspending the publication of further information on the beneficiaries of agricultural funding." Germany is the only country to have done so."

Aigner is by profession a trained radio and TV technician who appears to us intellectually and by educational background to be totally out of her league in her ministerial post. What does Aigner know about law? One of the tragedies of our media age is that "pretty faces" such as Aigner are elevated into top political positions where they wreak havoc due to their lack of qualifications.

In fact, as we already know from a November 2007 Stern article Agrarsubventionen: Volle Töpfe für die Großen, the lion's share of EU agricultural CAP subsidies to Germany is going into the pockets of the large agribusiness concerns and the old landholding gentry, just as in the UK.
The idea that the names of those who are plundering the European Union economy should be kept secret is a travesty, as pointed out by Jack Thuston in the EUObserver article by Pop:

"This is a disgrace. The handful of politicians and judges in Germany who are opposing transparency are acting as the puppets of big agri-business and wealthy landowners, who's only interest is to keep the German people in the dark about the reality of farm subsidies," Jack Thuston, co-founder of www.farmsubsidy.org, the journalist-launched initiative behind the EU requirement, said in a statement.

He also pointed to the fact that the commission can release the names of the beneficiaries if a member state dodged this requirement, because the EU executive does have this data on file.

"Farmsubsidy.org originally proposed that the commission publish the information in one single dataset, partly because it would be simpler, less bureaucratic and less fragmented, and partly in anticipation that some member states would backslide from their obligations, as Germany is now doing. Unfortunately the commission chose to pass the responsibility down to member states," he added.

Also on Friday, a court in Munster ruled that the publication of names, addresses and amounts of EU funding received by farmers complies with German legislation. The ruling cannot be challenged further."

It is quite clear in this quarter that the names must be revealed. It will now be interesting to see who does the revealing and what consequences it will have. With Ministers like Aigner, Merkel does not need enemies - they are in her own cabinet.

Portugal Leads the Way to Legal Reform & Drug Decriminalization by Setting a Successful Drug Law Example for the EU and the USA in Particular

2009-04-27T17:43:00.000+02:00

According to Eric E. Sterling, President of the non-profit Criminal Justice Policy Foundation and former counsel on anti-drug legislation to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, there are currently 2.3 million Americans in jails or prisons, many of them due to drug infractions:

"We certainly need to imprison dangerous offenders - to protect us and to punish them. But we need to get a lot smarter about why we imprison and who we imprison. Remarkably, in the last thirty years, the largest increase in imprisonment has been due to prohibition drug policy.

Even though drug enforcement leaders have warned for more than twenty years that "we can't arrest our way out of the drug problem," every year we arrest more people for drug offenses than the year before. Last year we arrested over 1.8 million Americans, more than three times the number arrested for all violent crimes combined. Now about one-quarter of those in prison are serving drug sentences. As the centerpiece of our anti-drug strategy, arrests and imprisonment have failed: high school seniors report that drugs are easier for them to get now than in the 1970s and 1980s."

Andrew Bosworth at PopulistAmerica.com in Incarceration Nation: The Rise of a Prison-Industrial Complex writes similarly:

"Consider this disturbing fact: the United States now has the world's highest incarceration rate outside of North Korea. Out of 1,000 people, more Americans are behind bars than anywhere in the world except in Kim Jong-Il's Neo-Stalinist state. The US has a higher incarceration rate than China, Russia, Iran, Zimbabwe and Burma - countries American politicians often berate for their human rights violations.

Well over two million Americans are behind bars. Let us agree that violent criminals and sex offenders should be in jail, but most Americans are not aware that over one million people spend year after year in prison for non-violent and petty offenses: small-time drug dealing, street hustling, prostitution, bouncing checks and even writing graffiti. Texas, with its boot-in-your-butt criminal justice system, is now attempting to incarcerate people who get drunk at bars - even if they are not disturbing the peace and intend to take a taxi home...

Arguably, continuously lowering the bar for what it takes to be jailed threatens the liberty of all Americans. And having one million non-violent offenders in prison (often for absurdly long periods) makes it that much easier, in the near future, for the return of debtors' prisons and dissident detention centers. This approach to locking up everyone possible undermines both the liberal emphasis on personal liberty and the conservative emphasis on small government."

Who out there in the American criminal justice system understands the basic wisdom found in Herbert Packer's Limits of the Criminal Sanction? What lawmaker, government official, judge, prosecutor, or prison official in the United States has ever read Packer's book - much less applied the inexorable legal policy conclusions demanded by it? (see Google Books, this PPT and Packer's Two Models of the Criminal Process)

Not every undesirable human action or activity in society is or should be subject to criminal punishments. There are other - more modern - means available to deal with socially undesirable behavior.

Indeed, the primitive idea of jails or prisons as legal solutions for societal problems has been around for millennia. But such jails and prisons, except as a deserved punishment of and/or an effective deterrent of violent and dangerous criminals, are by their very nature as outdated in modern law as the now discredited blood-letting is in modern medicine, which was an accepted medical practice worldwide from the earliest times of humanity down to the late 19th century, a flawed medical practice which surely cost America's first President, George Washington, his life (we quote from the Wikipedia):

"Bloodletting was also popular in the young United States of America.... George Washington asked to be bled heavily after he developed a throat infection from weather exposure. Almost 4 pounds (1.7 litres) of blood was withdrawn ... contributing to his death in 1799."

We were reminded of the similar backward state of contemporary American law by the April 26, 2009 TIME article of Maia Szalavitz on Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work? (referring to an article by Glenn Greenwald at the Cato Institute), where the answer to that question in the title is a clear, resounding, "YES, drug decriminalization has worked in Portugal".

Szalavitz quotes Glenn Greenwald, writing at the Cato Institute:

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

What sensible legal policy did Portugal adopt?

Going to the original article at the Cato Institute, Glenn Greenwald writes in Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies :

"On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were "decriminalized," not "legalized." Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense....

The data show that, judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success. Within this success lie self-evident lessons that should guide drug policy debates around the world." [emphasis added]

We are particularly gratified to read this result, because the Portuguese solution is the solution advocated 40 years ago by our mentor at Stanford Law School, the late Professor John Kaplan - famed for his legal brilliance from his days at Harvard, a former prosecutor who was a conservative at heart - who in the late 1960's was selected as a member of a top-notch advisory committee of law professors to advise the California state legislature on a revision of the California criminal (penal) code.

Kaplan's drug research at that time led the professorial advisory committee to recommend the decriminalization of marijuana in California to the California legislature - with the result, if memory serves correctly, that some if not all of the entire advisory committee was released from its duties by the legislature and replaced by other law professors whose political views were more in line with what the California legislature wanted to hear. I know of this only be hearsay and can not vouch for the exact details.

In any case, Kaplan responded to this experience with his book, Marijuana: The New Prohibition, which I had the honor and pleasure to edit while still a student, and in which Kaplan was of the opinion that drugs such as marijuana should be "decriminalized" - it was his major recommendation in this field of law. Drug abuse, as Herbert Packer - for whom I was also a student assistant at Stanford Law School - would have predicted by the principles in his book on the limits of the criminal sanction, simply does not lend itself well to control by criminal punishments.

Eric E. Sterling, J.D., President of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in his Drug Policy Bibliography and Websites lists Kaplan's book as follows:

"John Kaplan, Marijuana – The New Prohibition, Pocket Books, New York, 1971, 402 pp. A
classic. Stanford law professor John Kaplan demolished the factual foundation for marijuana
prohibition when originally published in 1970. Throughly documented."

Talcott Bates M.D. wrote in his book review of Marijuana: The New Prohibition:

"Professor Kaplan was appointed in 1966 by the California Senate to a committee to revise the California Penal Code, last completely revised in 1872. By chance he was assigned the drug laws, about which he felt he had no knowledge or experience except that which he had acquired as a one-time prosecutor as Assistant United States Attorney. It became apparent at once that the key drug problem in California was the treatment of marijuana. Not until the treatment of marijuana was intelligently handled would progress in the broader area of drug abuse be possible.

Marijuana: The New Prohibition reviews the history of marijuana, how in 1937, four years after Prohibition ended, Congress outlawed the sale, possession, and use of marijuana. Professor Kaplan points out that the measure of the wisdom of any law is the measure of its total social
and financial costs and the benefits that derive from this outlay. This book is an attempt to measure the costs of the criminalization of marijuana and concludes that the costs far outweigh the benefits."

It is not without reason, as written at ProhibitionCosts.Org, that in the year 2005, three Nobel laureates in economics and more than 500 distinguished economists advocated "replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcoholic beverages [which] would produce combined savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year...."

In terms of drug possession and abuse, as I wrote previously elsewhere about John Kaplan's book:

"John Kaplan's
Marijuana -- The New Prohibition

John's book on the drug laws resulted from his membership on a professorial advisory committee to the California state legislature. John was quite conservative in his views and had in fact served as a public prosecutor of crimes, but his committee recommended a liberal stance toward marijuana - regarding its criminalization to be a legislative mistake.

John's view was that the legislature should concentrate more on workable laws regarding hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine, which were the major dangers. Too much emphasis was going toward marijuana - where young people were easily being caught in the act of smoking - and too little effort was being placed on going after hard drug makers and dealers, where arrests were much harder for the authorities to obtain.

As the result of the objective committee report, however, the committee was fired by the California legislature and a new committee was formed, ostensibly with members whose views were more in line with what the legislature subjectively wanted to hear, whether it fit the facts or not. In his book, John predicted that the criminalization of marijuana would not work - it did not work - and that, on the contrary, the marijuana laws would strengthen the hard drug dealers as suppliers - which in fact happened, leading many people to take stronger drugs. The drug abuse mess that exists today throughout much of America is partially the result of this very erroneous drug law policy, having concentrated on marijuana and not enough on the truly dangerous substances.

See: Marijuana -- The New Prohibition
by John Kaplan
Publisher: Ty Crowell Co; 1st Edition (June 1970)"

The State of California and the other states of the United States ignored Kaplan's recommendations and the results are now in, 40 years later. They do not speak well for the wisdom of past or current legislation on drug laws or their enforcement. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) :

"In 2006, 25 million Americans age 12 and older had abused marijuana at least once in the year prior to being surveyed. Source: National Survey on Drug Use and Health; http://www.samhsa.gov/. The NIDA-funded 2007 Monitoring the Future Study showed that 10.3% of 8th graders, 24.6% of 10th graders, and 31.7% of 12th graders had abused marijuana at least once in the year prior to being surveyed. Source: Monitoring the Future http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/. "

The case for decriminalization and for a more intelligent approach to drug possession and abuse is clearly apparent.

Generally, in terms of all petty and needlessly "criminalized" legal infractions, there are great legislative and judicial opportunities out there to adopt sensible criminal laws, to get people out of jails and prisons who should not be there, and to help to integrate people into normal life rather than tossing them stupidly into jails and prisons, where little progress in development is possible for most. Quite the contrary, people are thrown together with hardened criminals, to their detriment. In most non-violent crimes, especially petty infractions, jail and/or prison should be the LAST option, not the first.

But how likely is it that an entrenched unmoving American legal system will now take the intelligent path forward to reform its vastly outdated drug laws and to free its jail and prison populations of people who should not be there?

Not very likely - unless the people in Congress and state legislatures suddenly get to be a lot smarter than we judge them to be.

For more resources on this topic, see the Cato Institute's Criminal Justice Reading List.

The BloggingPortal.eu Aggregates European Union (EU) Political Blogs

2009-04-02T15:27:00.000+02:00

The BloggingPortal.eu has instituted an interesting concept as it provides a website that aggregates European Union political blogs, 334 in number as of the date of this posting.

Hat tip to GrahnLaw.

The Odd Couple : President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany : A Partnership for European Unity ? The G20 Summit

2009-04-02T15:20:00.000+02:00

Steven Erlanger and Nicholas Kulish have a very perspicacious March 30, 2009 article in the New York Times on the European economic situation at Sarkozy and Merkel Try to Shape European Unity, in which they refer to the "odd couple" of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who are currently leading a world in which we are surely seeing the inglorious end of what Erlanger and Kulish call "unbridled capitalism".

Erlanger and Kulish write about the French and German government heads:

"[A]n extremely odd couple — he is short and hyperactive, she is dour and shy. He believes in the power of the state and big interventions; she believes in a softer role for the state, guiding and prodding the market. Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel don’t even get along very well, aides to both leaders say. He has made fun of her accent in private meetings, the aides say, and she says he is self-centered and impetuous.

But the French president and the German chancellor find themselves in a forced marriage in these days of economic crisis. Responsible for the two largest economies among nations that use the euro, known as the euro zone, they are trying to shape European unity in the days before the Group of 20 economic summit meeting this week." Read the rest here for current German and French economic policies.

That London G20 summit started today. G20 stands for the Group of Twenty at whose home page we find the following information:

"The Group of Twenty (G-20) Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors was established in 1999 to bring together systemically important industrialized and developing economies to discuss key issues in the global economy. The inaugural meeting of the G-20 took place in Berlin, on December 15-16, 1999, hosted by German and Canadian finance ministers....

The G-20 was created as a response both to the financial crises of the late 1990s and to a growing recognition that key emerging-market countries were not adequately included in the core of global economic discussion and governance....

The G-20 is made up of the finance ministers and central bank governors of 19 countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, and also the European Union who is represented by the rotating Council presidency and the European Central Bank. To ensure global economic fora and institutions work together, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the President of the World Bank, plus the chairs of the International Monetary and Financial Committee and Development Committee of the IMF and World Bank, also participate in G-20 meetings on an ex-officio basis. The G-20 thus brings together important industrial and emerging-market countries from all regions of the world. Together, member countries represent around 90 per cent of global gross national product, 80 per cent of world trade (including EU intra-trade) as well as two-thirds of the world's population. The G-20's economic weight and broad membership gives it a high degree of legitimacy and influence over the management of the global economy and financial system."

Well, we shall see what the G20 brings. Right now they really have their work cut out for them in the face of a recession that can easily devolve into a full-scale world depression if the right counteracting measures are not taken immediately worldwide by these governments and institutions in particular.

Hat tip to CaryGEE.

Fourth European Forum for In-House Counsel : 23-24 April 2009 Brussels : Academy of European Law : European Company Lawyers Association (ECLA/AEJE)

2009-03-25T17:12:00.000+01:00

The 4th EUROPEAN FORUM FOR IN-HOUSE COUNSEL, sponsored by the Academy of European Law (ERA, Europäische Rechtsakademie, Académie de Droit Européen, Accademia di Diritto Europeo) and by the European Company Lawyers Association (ECLA/AEJE) will take place in Brussels, Belgium on Thursday and Friday, 23-24 April 2009. As written at the ERA website:

"For the fourth consecutive year, ERA and ECLA are organising the European Forum for In-House Counsel, combining the pragmatism of an in-house lawyer association with the expertise of a first-class European training institute.

The European Forum for In-House Counsel provides a forum for the exchange of practical experience, knowledge and views between all in-house counsel and other lawyers involved in business affairs.

The aim is to provide in-house counsel, through expert input, with a comprehensive overview of and a practical insight into issues of European Community law with which in-house counsel are confronted. The latest developments and the recent relevant case law of the Community courts in areas such as European competition law, European company law, European private law will be analysed during the forum.

Interaction among participants will be encouraged through periods of discussion and case studies.
Early registration discounts
10% before 31 March 2009"

This is a heavyweight European legal outfit, as one can tell from their board members, which provide a bit of the flavor of the leading edge of the European law community. Significantly, there are no representatives from Latvia, so that, of course, I am available:

GOVERNING BOARD

"President: Dr Jacques Santer
Former Prime Minister of Luxembourg, former President of the European Commission, former Member of the European Parliament, Representing Luxembourg

Vice-President: Joachim Mertes
President of the Parliament of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate, Representing Rhineland-Palatinate

Members:

Elish Angiolini QC, The Lord Advocate, Representing Scotland

Patricia Barbadillo (tbc), Director of the Centre for Legal Studies at the Ministry of Justice, Representing Spain

Emmanuel Barbe, Head of the European and International Department, Ministry of Justice, Representing France

Tomás Bocek, Deputy Minister for International Relations, Representing the Czech Republic

Dr Tonio Borg, Minister for Justice and Home Affairs, Representing Malta

Petros Clerides, Attorney General of the Republic of Cyprus, Representing Cyprus

Professor Ingolf Deubel, Minister of Finance of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate, Special representative of the host State

Dr Tibor Draskovics, Minister of Justice, Representing Hungary

Paul Jenkins, The Treasury Solicitor, Representing the United Kingdom

Klaus Jensen, Mayor of the City of Trier, Representing the City of Trier

Professor Ioannis Karakostas, University of Athens, Representing Greece

Kari Kiesiläinen, Director General, Ministry of Justice, Representing Finland

Professor Janez Kranjc, University of Ljubljana, Representing Slovenia

Horst Langes, Former State Secretary, Honorary Member of the European Parliament, Representing the Association for the Promotion of the Academy of European Law

Dr Georg Lienbacher, Head, Constitutional Department, Federal Chancellery, Representing Austria

Roswitha Müller-Piepenkötter, Minister of Justice of the State of North-Rhine-Westphalia, Representing the German Federal States

Deirbhle Murphy, Parliamentary Counsel, Office of the Attorney General, Representing Ireland

Arkadiusz Plucinski, Director, European Law Department, Office of the Committee for European Integration, Representing Poland

Catalin Predoiu, Minister of Justice, Representing Romania

Professor Anabela Miranda Rodrigues, Director of the Centre for Judicial Studies, Representing Portugal

Professor Vassilios Skouris, President of the Court of Justice of the European Communities, Representing the Court of Justice

Erik van den Emster, President, Raad voor de Rechtspraak, Representing the Netherlands

Anna Vitteková, State Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Representing the Slovak Republic

Diana Wallis, Vice-President, European Parliament, Representing the European Parliament

Tora Wigstrand, Director, Division for European Union Affairs, Ministry of Justice, Representing Sweden

Brigitte Zypries, Federal Minister of Justice, Representing Germany

Co-opted: Peter Schmidhuber, former Member of the European Commission"

EXECUTIVE BOARD

"Chairperson: Klaus-Heiner Lehne, Member of the European Parliament

Members:

Dr. Heinz Georg Bamberger, Minister of Justice of the State of Rhineland Palatinate

Giuseppe Gargani, Member of the European Parliament and Chairman of the Legal Affairs Committee"

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

"The Board of Trustees

The Board of Trustees advises the Executive Board and Management Board particularly with regard to the planning of the programme of events. It is composed of individuals who are closely involved with European law in the institutions of the European Union and within legal and economic circles, particularly in the Member States.

Chairman: Judge John Toulmin CMG QC, High Court of Justice, the Technology and Construction Court, London

Deputy chairman: Dr Josef Azizi, Member of the Court of First Instance of the European Communities

Persons from the Institutions of the European Union

Representatives from the Member States

Persons from the legal professions, social partners and academia
a/ Legal professions
b/ Business and Society
c/ Academia

Honorary members

Persons from the institutions of the European Union and other European and international institutions

Ivan Bizjak, Director General of Justice and Home Affairs at the Council of the European Union

Professor Klaus Dieter Borchardt, Deputy Head of Cabinet to the Commissioner for Agriculture, European Commission

Vítor Manuel da Silva Caldeira, President of the Court of Auditors of the European Communities

Marc Jaeger, President of the Court of First Instance of the European Communities

Sarah Jund, Legal Secretary, Court of Justice of the European Communities

Professor Koenraad Lenaerts, member of the Court of Justice of the European Communities

José Luís Lopes da Mota, President of Eurojust

Paul Maier, President of the Boards of Appeal, Office of Harmonization for the Internal Market

Christian Pennera, Jurisconsult of the European Parliament

Jean-Claude Piris, Director General of the Legal Service, Council of the European Union

Sir Konrad Schiemann, member of the Court of Justice of the European Communities

Wolfgang Schomburg, Judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

Representatives from the Member States

Austria: Dr Josef Azizi, Member of the Court of First Instance of the European Communities

Cyprus: Dr Constantinos Lycourgos, Head of the EU Section for the Attorney General of the Republic, Nicosia

Czech Republic: JUDr Jana Wurstová, former Head of the International Department, Czech Bar Association, Prague

Finland: The Hon. Mr Justice Niilo Jääskinen, Supreme Administrative Court, Helsinki

France: N.N.

Germany: Lutz Diwell, State Secretary, Ministry of Justice, Berlin

Greece: N.N.

Hungary: Dr Judit Lévayné Fazekas, Deputy State Secretary, Ministry of Justice, Budapest

Ireland: Justice Nial Fennelly, Supreme Court of Ireland, Dublin

Italy: Professor Remo Caponi, University of Florence

Luxembourg: N.N.

The Netherlands: Derk Roemers, Raad van State, The Hague

Poland: Dr Maciej Szpunar, University of Silesia

Portugal: Professor Fausto de Quadros, Law Faculty, University of Lisbon

Romania: Tudor Chiuariu, State Counsellor, Adviser to the Prime Minister, Bucharest

Scotland: N.N.

Slovakia: JUDr Petr Hulla, Director of the Judicial Academy, Pezinok

Slovenia: Dr Janez Cebulj, former President of the Constitutional Court, Ljubljana

Spain: N.N.

Sweden: Kristina Holmgren, Director, Division for European Affairs, Ministry of Justice, Stockholm

United Kingdom: Lord Jonathan Mance, The House of Lords, London

Persons from the legal professions, social partners and academia

a/ Legal professions:

Professor Massimo Benedettelli, Partner, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Milan; University of Bari

Jean-Marie Burguburu, former Bâtonnier of the Paris Bar; Partner, Gide Loyrette Nouel, Paris

Paul de Jonge, Secretary General of the European Company Lawyers Association (ECLA), Brussels

Victor Hall, Secretary General, European Judicial Training Network, Brussels

Dr Hans-Jürgen Hellwig, Attorney at law, former President of CCBE, Partner, Hengeler Müller, Frankfurt am Main

Pauliine Koskelo, President of the Supreme Court, Helsinki

Péter Köves, President of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), Brussels

Vincent Lamanda, First President of the Court of Cassation, Paris

Vito Monetti, President of the association Magistrats Européens pour la Démocratie et les Libertés (MEDEL), Rome

Professor Philippe-Emmanuel Partsch, Partner, Arendt & Medernach, Luxembourg

Jean-François Thony, Director of the French Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature, Bordeaux

Virgilijus Valancius, President of the European Judges Association, Vilnius

Denis Waelbroeck, Partner, Ashurst, Brussels

Tomasz Wardynski, President, Wardynski & Partners, Warsaw

Dr Heinrich Zens, President of the Association of European Administrative Judges, Vienna

b/ Business and Society

Philippe de Buck, Secretary General, Business Europe, Brussels

Sir Thomas Macpherson, former President of Eurochambres, London

John Monks, Secretary General of the European Trade Union Confederation, Brussels

Jettie Van Caenegem, Director General, Foundation against Cancer, Brussels

c/ Academia

Professor Peter Axer, Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Trier

Professor Wladyslaw Czaplinski, University of Warsaw

Professor Paul Demaret, Rector of the College of Europe, Bruges

Professor Catherine Kessedjian, University of Paris-II Panthéon Assas

Professor Ludwig Krämer, University of Bremen

Professor Yves Mény, President of the European University Institute, Florence

Professor Peter-Christian Müller-Graff, Director of the Institute for German and European Social and Economic Law, Heidelberg

Professor Torsten Stein, Director of the Europa Institute of the University of the Saarland, Saarbrücken

Professor Walter van Gerven, Universities of Louvain and Maastricht, former Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Communities

Honorary Members

Francesco de Angelis, former Director at the European Commission

Professor Sir David A. O. Edward, former member of the Court of Justice of the European Communities, Edinburgh, See external website "The Judge David Edward Oral History"

Dr. Charles Elsen, former Director General of Justice and Home Affairs at the Council of the European Union, Luxembourg

Professor Gregorio Garzón Clariana, former Jurisconsulte of the European Parliament

Willi Rothley, former Member of the European Parliament, Rockenhausen"

Relaunch of Europeana : The European Union Digital Cultural Resource Project Appears in Improved From with over 4 Million Digital Items

2009-03-25T17:10:00.000+01:00

We were informed by email today that Europeana, the digital cultural resource project of the European Union, currently presenting access to over 4 million digital items at museums and libraries throughout the EU, has relaunched again after a problematic start in November.

Europeana explains what it is about, and provides to us a list of the partner organizations that make materials available to Europeana.

That same "about us" page provides us with an overview of Europeana as follows:

"The [European] Commission has been working for a number of years on projects to boost the digital economy. These prepared the ground for an online service that would bring together Europe's cultural heritage.

The idea for Europeana came from a letter to the Presidency of Council and to the Commission on 28 April 2005. Six Heads of State and Government suggested the creation of a virtual European library, aiming to make Europe's cultural and scientific resources accessible for all.

On 30 September 2005 the European Commission published the i2010: communication on digital libraries, where it announced its strategy to promote and support the creation of a European digital library, as a strategic goal within the European Information Society i2010 Initiative, which aims to foster growth and jobs in the information society and media industries. The European Commission's goal for Europeana is to make European information resources easier to use in an online environment. It will build on Europe's rich heritage, combining multicultural and multilingual environments with technological advances and new business models.

The Europeana prototype is the result of a 2-year project that began in July 2007. Europeana.eu went live on 20 November 2008, launched by Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

Europeana is a Thematic Network funded by the European Commission under the eContentplus programme, as part of the i2010 policy. Originally known as the European digital library network – EDLnet – it is a partnership of 100 representatives of heritage and knowledge organisations and IT experts from throughout Europe. They contribute to the Work Packages that are solving the technical and usability issues.

The project is run by a core team based in the national library of the Netherlands, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. It builds on the project management and technical expertise developed by The European Library, which is a service of the Conference of European National Librarians.

Overseeing the project is the EDL Foundation, which includes key European cultural heritage associations from the four domains. The Foundation’s statutes commit members to:

Providing access to Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage though a cross-domain portal
Co-operating in the delivery and sustainability of the joint portal
Stimulating initiatives to bring together existing digital content
Supporting digitisation of Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage"

European Union Court of First Instance finds EU Senior Position Job Vacancy Adverts are Discriminatory if Published Only in English, French and German

2008-12-04T17:37:00.000+01:00

The translators in Europe will be happy about a decision of the Court of First Instance of the European Union, just handed down in case in which the suit was brought by Italy, as joined by Spain and Latvia.

The court decision nullified a European Commission policy, adopted in the year 2004, to publish job vacancy notices for senior positions in English, French and German languages only. The court held that such a selective language policy is discriminatory.

Read the details at EU Law Blog.

Europeana Crashes on Launch Day to Return in December in a Better More Improved Version

2008-11-23T18:46:00.000+01:00

Not everything is as easy as it looks. On November 20, 2008 the European Union Digital Libraries Initiative launched Europeana, a multimillion-euro digital library intended as a friendly and cooperative European competitor to things like Google Book Search.

As written by Leigh Phillips at EUobserver, here is the idea:

"Websurfers can access some 2 million books, maps, recordings, photographs, archival documents, paintings and films from national libraries and cultural institutions of the EU's 27 member states.

"Europeana is much more than a library, it is a veritable dynamo to inspire 21st century Europeans to emulate the creativity of innovative forbears like the drivers of the Renaissance," said commission president Jose Manuel Barroso at the launch."

But the launch hit a serious snag, again as Leigh Phillips writes at EUobserver:

"Going live on Thursday (20 November), the site was instantly overwhelmed by the 10 million visitors per hour it was receiving and crashed mid-morning, requiring a quick doubling of the number of servers supporting the library. It crashed again in the early evening."

When one now goes to the Europeana website, one is greeted with the following message - our scan of the current page there:
(CLICK HERE FOR THAT SUBSEQUENT LINK TO FURTHER INFORMATION)
__________

__________

Rome was not built in a day.

Update:
The New York Times Stephen Castle reports in
Europeana Goes Online and Is Then Overwhelmed

EQLS : The Second European Quality of Life Survey – First Findings viz. Deuxième enquête européenne sur la qualité de vie - Premiers résultats

2008-11-20T22:06:00.000+01:00

Via EUobserver.com we have learned of the 2nd EQLS (European Quality of Life Survey) by Eurofound (European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions).

The EQLS Survey will be published in full only in the year 2009, but as of November 18, 2008 we do now already have the first results of that survey in an English-language .pdf and a French-language .pdf, respectively titled Second European Quality of Life Survey – First Findings viz. Deuxième enquête européenne sur la qualité de vie - Premiers résultats.

The results confirm the sentiment of the Bob Hope cinema film of the year 1965 whose title I'll take Sweden might just as well represent the primarily Nordic winners of this Eurofound survey, as the Nordic nations dominate in "happiness", as shown by the following graphics from the EQLS First Results:

EQLS Second European Quality Of Life Survey - First Results - Figures 1 and 2

The Life Satisfaction and Happiness Index for the European Union Member States and Candidate Countries gives the following rankings, from most happy and satisfied to least happy and least satisfied:

1. Denmark
2. Sweden
3. Finland
4. Norway
5. Netherlands
6. Luxembourg
7. Ireland
8. Malta
9. Belgium
10. United Kingdom
11. France
12. Spain
13. Germany
14. Cyprus
15. Poland
16. Austria
17. Slovakia
18. Estonia
19. Czech Republic
20. Greece
21. Italy
22. Romania
23. Croatia
24. Lithuania
25. Portugal
26. Turkey
27. Latvia
28. Hungary
29. FYR Macedonia
30. Bulgaria

The First Findings of the Survey cover:

Life Satisfaction
- General parameters
- Optimism
- Subjective well-being

Income and Deprivation
- Household essentials and deprivation
- Dealing with lack of income

Family

Work-life balance

Health and health care
- Mental health
- Health care services

Housing, environment and quality of society
- Quality of housing
- Local environment

Quality of society
- Trust in other people and Institutions
- Tension between societal groups

Methodology"

For further information we refer to the contact data found at the end of the First Findings publication:

Teresa Renehan, Information Liaison Officer:
ter@eurofound.europa.eu
European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working
Conditions
Wyattville Road, Loughlinstown, Dublin 18, Ireland
Telephone: (+353 1) 204 31 00
Email: postmaster@eurofound.europa.eu
Website: http://www.eurofound.europa.eu

Crossposted to LawPundit.

What Do Europeans Care About? Google Searches as Measured in the Individual Member Countries by the EU Observer Monthly Top 10

2008-11-18T13:09:00.000+01:00

EU Observer has a new feature by which they produce a monthly EU Observer list via Google Zeitgeist of the Top 10 percentage spikes in Google searches in the EU, which, as the EU Observer writes, "allows small countries such as Finland and Austria to figure in the results, if an event prompted a sudden surge in interest."

The top ten so weighted searches in October, 2008 in the EU were:

October

HALLOWEEN: American style "trick or treating" swept Europe on 31 October.
VAALIKONE: Finns searched election website in municipal elections on 26 October.
ICESAVE: UK subsidiary of Iceland's Landisbanki declared bankruptcy.
SUPRENALOTTO: Italy's lottery site swept when Sicilian suburb won €100 million.
KENZA FARAH: The French R&B singer was hurt in a car accident on 13 October.
FALLOUT 3: This nuclear simulation game was launched on 16 October.
PES 2009: The Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 video game was released.
X FACTOR: The UK's hit reality show drew record audiences in October.
AC DC: The Australian band released its new album Black Ice on 20 October.
MAM TALENT: The Polish version of the television show "I Have Talent!".

Take a look. There IS a big world out there, beyond our own neighborhoods. Stay informed.

Crossposted to LawPundit.

Paris Summit Approves the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) as composed of EU Member States and Mediterranean States

2008-07-15T12:12:00.000+02:00

Here is an interesting geopolitical question. What country in Africa, NOT located on the Mediterranean, is a part of the just approved Union for the Mediterranean (UfM)? See UfM map. This country is geographically larger than either France, Germany or Spain, more than twice as large geographically as Iraq, nearly six times the geographic size of Syria, and also larger geographically than either Egypt or Turkey. The answer is: Mauritania. (See world map).

On July 13, 2008 Barcelona Process : Union for the Mediterranean (Union pour la Méditerranée) was approved at the Paris Summit of the leaders of the member countries. The organization, though in somewhat different form, was originally the brainchild of French President Nicolas Sarkozy "who said its aim was to ensure the region's people could love each other instead of making war."

The Union for the Mediterranean is a 43-member community, encompassing 750 million people (ca. 25% from Arab States), and comprised of the Member States of the European Union plus the "states" bordering on the Mediterranean Sea and participating in the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (the so-called "Barcelona Process").

The goal of the Union for the Mediterranean is to improve relations between the EU, North Africa and the Middle East and to tackle common problems such as immigration, pollution and political unrest.

But already one day after approval of the Union there are signs that the leadership of the non-EU countries will have to struggle to muster up the maturity and the discipline needed to carry out such an ambitious project, which has been cautiously supported by the USA in the hopes of "spurring on Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations."

There is also negative opinion that the Union for the Mediterranean could serve to accelerate general devolution in the European Union.

Nevertheless, in spite of the obvious political problems involved, main areas of focus of the Union for the Mediterranean will be:

improving energy supply
fighting pollution in the Mediterranean
strengthening the surveillance of maritime traffic and "civil security cooperation"
setting up a Mediterranean Erasmus exchange programme for students, and
creating a scientific community between Europe and its southern neighbours.

For an interactive map (in French) relating to details about the UfM (Union for the Mediterranean), see Making Mediterranean waves at the blog of MESH, Middle East Strategy at Harvard, a project of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Crossposted from LawPundit.

EDRI Protects Privacy and Digital Civil Rights in Europe

2008-03-26T16:19:00.000+01:00

European Digital Rights (EDRI) is an organization in Europe which defends civil rights in the "information society" in Europe. As written at their website:

"European Digital Rights was founded in June 2002. Currently 28 privacy and civil rights organisations have EDRI membership. They are based or have offices in 17 different countries in Europe....

Statutory membership is restricted to not-for-profit, non-governmental organisations whose goals include the defence and promotion of civil rights in the field of information- and communication technology."

EDRI produces EDRI-gram, a bi-weekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe.

Subscribe here to EDRI-gram.

New Urgent Preliminary Ruling Procedure is Applicable in the European Union (EU) Starting March 1, 2008

2008-03-25T23:58:00.000+01:00

The Court of Justice of the European Communities, the Curia in Luxembourg, has issued a press release in which it outlines the completely new Urgent Preliminary Ruling Procedure which started application on March 1, 2008 as a European Union procedure in the area of freedom, security and justice:

"The Treaty of Amsterdam on the European Union (EU) which came into force on 1 May 1999 states that the EU:

must be maintained and developed as an area of freedom, security and justice;
(an area) in which the free movement of persons is assured;
in conjunction with appropriate measures with respect to external border controls, asylum, immigration and the prevention and combating of crime."

This area now covers:

Free movement of persons
Visa policy
EU external borders policy
Schengen area
Immigration
Asylum
Judicial cooperation in civil and criminal matters
Drugs policy coordination
EU citizenship
Data protection
Fundamental rights
Racism and xenophobia
Police and customs cooperation
Crime prevention
Fight against organised crime
External relations
Enlargement from a justice and home affairs perspective

Since the normal preliminary ruling procedure on such cases takes on average a year and a half, the Court of Justice, at the urging of the Council, proposed the adoption of the Urgent Preliminary Ruling Procedure in order to expedite urgent cases. As the Court of Justice writes:

"This procedure is applicable as from 1 March 2008 and should enable the Court to deal far more quickly with the most sensitive issues relating to the area of freedom, security and justice, such as those which may arise, for example, in certain situations where a person is deprived of his liberty and the answer to the question raised is decisive as to the assessment of the legal situation of the person detained or deprived of his liberty, or, in proceedings concerning parental authority or custody of children, where the jurisdiction under Community law of the court hearing the case depends on the answer to the question referred for a preliminary ruling."

Hat tip to EU Law Blog, where there is more discussion of this development in detail, including a supplemental information note.

Main European Union Law Websites

2008-02-12T11:40:00.000+01:00

The website of the Delegation of the European Commission to the USA has a page of law links which it calls ESSENTIAL EUROPEAN UNION LAW WEBSITES in the title and additionally in the page heading also labels Best European Union Law Websites and Principal European Union Law Websites.

The links are divided into two major categories:

1. GATEWAY AND MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL WEBSITES
- in the United States
- in Europe

2. ATABASE WEBSITES VIA EUROPA at
http://europa.eu/geninfo/info/guide/index_en.htm#db

GDP Growth in the EU : Latvia Leads the European Union (EU) in the Dynamics of Economies of the Member States

2008-02-04T21:46:00.000+01:00

The blog EU for US links to a CBS (.nl) graph showing GDP growth in the European Union Member States since 2005. These growth statistics say a lot about the future of Europe and indicate clearly that the older economies of the EU are being surpassed in dynamics by the rapidly expanding economies of the newer European Union countries.

We have converted that graph to a list showing the relative rank of the EU countries by GDP growth and have appended the approximate growth rate:

1. Latvia (ca. 12% growth)
2. Estonia (over 11%)
3. Slovakia (over 8%)
4. Romania (nearly 8%)
5. Lithuania (over 6%)
6. Luxembourg (just over 6%)
7. Bulgaria (about 6%)
8. Czech Republik (about 6%)
9. Ireland (about 6%)
10. Poland (between 5% and 6%)
11. Finland (between 5% and 6%)
12. Slovenia (between 5% and 6%)
13. Greece (between 4% and 5%)
14. Sweden (just over 4%)
15. Hungary (about 4%)
16. Spain (about 4%)
17. Cyprus (about 4%)
18. Belgium (about 3%)
19. Denmark (about 3%)
20. Austria (about 3%)
21. Netherlands (about 3%)
22. Malta (about 3%)
23. Germany (just under 3%)
24. United Kingdom (just under 3%)
25. France (about 2%)
26. Italy (about 2%)
27. Portugal (over 1%)

Epiphany in Europe : The Star Singers (Sternsinger) in Germany, Austria and Switzerland

2008-01-06T17:23:00.000+01:00

The Sternsinger (star singers) dressed as the three Biblical Magi (kings, wise men) were just at our door this afternoon on a bright sunny Sunday here in Germany and we thus thought that we would tell you something about them, because they represent a seldom seen side of the low-key but still fundamentally deep strength of Christian tradition in Europe.

More than 500000 children are underway as "star singers" (Sternsinger) at this time of year (predominantly today, January 6, Epiphany) in the German-speaking nations of Europe, i.e. not only (but predominantly) in Germany, as also in Austria and Switzerland.

Epiphany as a Christian religious feast most certainly first marked the nativity or baptism of Christ, although the tradition may go back to even more ancient astronomical celebrations.

The star singers are sponsored by the local Catholic churches and this year in Germany are underway under the motto "Sternsinger für die Eine Welt" (star singers for one world).

The star singers ring doorbells at households all across the land (primarily in Catholic areas), and when those doors are opened - it is considered bad luck to send the star singers away without opening doors for them - the star singers then sing songs of faith at those doorsteps in order by collection to raise money for needy children around the world. Below are some photos of the star singers:

A 2004 AP photo from Deutsche Welle

A photo of star singers in 2007 at the doorstep of the Parliament
of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous State
A blessing is written in chalk by the star singers on the front door of the household, marking the current year, together with the initials of the three Biblical kings (or wise men):

20*C+M+B*08

See the blessing to the left, wirtten in chalk on a door this year 2008.

It is also possible in the course of development of this custom that the initials CMB - always in that order - either initially or subsequently meant Christus mansionem benedicat, which translates generally as "may Christ bless this house".

Europe's Shared Values are the Values of the West : Heinrich August Winkler in Die Welt : European Union Urgently Needs to Develop a "We-Feeling"

2008-01-05T02:43:00.000+01:00

Surely one of the most perspicacious analysts of the European Union is Heinrich August Winkler (German bio, English bio), until March 2007 Professor of Contemporary History at the Humboldt University of Berlin, who has a superb article in the December 27, 2007 issue of Die Welt (online in German).

As written about Professor Winkler by the German Historical Institute:

"Prof. Winkler has been a Kennedy Memorial Fellow at Harvard University; a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C., and a fellow of Berlin’s Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg)."

Winkler is also the author of:

Auf ewig in Hitlers Schatten? Über die Deutschen und ihre Geschichte (Forever In Hitler’s Shadow? Concerning the Germans and Their History, a seminal work unfortunately available only in German);
and,
Germany: The Long Road West (in English by Oxford University Press, 2006) in which author Winkler:

"follows the West’s long path to the division of power, the inalienable rights of humankind, and pluralistic democracy. At the end is a plea to the listener to understand the political culture of the West as “Streitkultur,” as a culture of conflict. Transatlantic controversies about political conclusions, a result of western values, are necessary again and again. It’s really a matter of the interpretation of values that both sides understand as obligatory."

In his "Die Welt" article, which we translate as The Values of Europe are the Values of the West: Why the European Union Urgently Needs to Develop a "We-Feeling", Winkler identifies some of the cardinal problems facing the EU and of Europe generally.

Among these problems, and above all is the current lack of a feeling of togetherness in Europe, the lack of a "we-feeling", which is fundamentally necessary for what Winkler calls "Project Europe" to succeed in the long term.

Moreover, this lack of a "we-feeling" is being exacerbated by a - too hasty - territorial expansion of the European Union which is proceeding at a faster pace than a corresponding - and absolutely essential - understanding of that expansion by European citizens, not only from a historical perspective, but also in terms of contemporary events and foreseeable (and unforeseeable) future developments. Winkler urges further necessary consolidation of the EU already formed, before any further expansion takes place, since this would only counteract such a consolidation at the present time (see in this regard euro|topics).

Winkler also points to the power of the executive in the Europe Union as "taking on a life of its own" as institutions such as the European Commission and the Council of the European Union increasingly dominate EU affairs, to the detriment of the European Parliament and the EU's judicial organs, a phenomenon which Winkler compares to Karl Marx's characterization of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (later Napoleon III), under whose rule, as written in the Wikipedia:

"New constitutional statutes were passed which officially maintained an elected Parliament and reestablished universal male suffrage. However, the Parliament now became irrelevant as real power was completely concentrated in the hands of Louis-Napoléon and his bureaucracy."

It is a direction which the European Union, following the French tradition, also appears in part to be taking under the currently dominant EU executive-based bureaucracy.

Winkler's primary thesis in his Die Welt article is that Europe alone is not "the West", as used in common parlance, but that "the West" transcends Europe and includes not only and especially the transatlantic connection to the United States of America and its modern-era concepts of "representative government", "checks and balances" and "the rule of law", but also extends to lands of the Occident which historically share the West European legal tradition, but who must battle the burden of their periods of previous Byzantine and Osmanic oppression.

Winkler says that the job of "Project Europe" can not be built by the "political class" alone, but that European consolidation can only be achieved if the civil population, the intellectuals, the scientists and the writers/commentators all understand Europe to be their project as well. Indeed, this posting at LawPundit is one small contribution to this effort.

Winkler asks all of those named groups to work to create "a commonly shared European public sphere," which has been identified as follows by publisher Routledge in describing a book edited by John Erik Fossum and Philip R Schlesinger, The European Union and the Public Sphere:

"The European Union is often attacked for its ‘democratic deficit’, namely its deficiencies in representation, transparency and accountability, as well as its lack of popular support. Can these shortcomings be counteracted by the development of a viable European public sphere?

This book assesses the possible formation of a communicative space that might enable and engender the creation of a transnational or a supranational public. The contributors consider the EU’s democratic credentials and how well it communicates, and they also evaluate the major institutions and their links to general publics.

The European Union and the Public Sphere emphasizes a ‘deliberative democratic’ perspective on the public sphere, addressing some key questions:

• What are the prospects for a European public sphere?
• Should we think in terms of the EU having a single public sphere, or are overlapping public spheres a more viable option?
• What do this book’s findings on the question of the public sphere tell us about the EU as a political entity?

Students and scholars of European democracy, political communication, and the politics of institutions will all be greatly interested by this book."

Put into straight language, what Winkler is arguing in his Die Welt article is that it is going to take a massive effort far beyond the EU institutions to get the people of Europe to adopt a "we-feeling" as Europeans, rather than seeing themselves as "nationals" belonging to a loose confederation of largely sovereign States with whom their own State shares some superficial commonalities.

Winkler sees the "shared value system" of "the West" as the primary common ground for the Member States of the European Union. In the last analysis, that is most certainly the glue required to establish a more unified Europe in the long-term. Shared values -- and their effective communication in the European public sphere -- are the key to the future consolidation of Europe. Those shared values also mark the limits of European Union expansion.

Cross-posted to LawPundit.

A Europe of Open Borders as Schengen Zone Expands

2008-01-03T10:33:00.000+01:00

Edis Bevan writes at his blog MKNE political information:

"Back in 1945 my mother swam the Elbe to escape the oncoming Soviet army and find refuge in British held territory. Europe was a place of fear.

At midnight today (20 December 2007) the Schengen agreement that allows for free passage –without need of passports- across national frontiers within most of the European Union is extended to include her native Lithuania (and eight other countries including Latvia and Estonia). What an extraordinary contrast in 60-odd years."

As Deutsche Welle and other news sources reported in the second half of December, expanded open borders in Europe in the Schengen Zone have become a reality as nine EU countries became Schengen Zone members on December 21, 2007: Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, joining previous Schengen Zone members Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Greece, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden, so that there are now 24 Schengen Zone members. In addition, Monaco honors the Schengen Agreement but is not a signatory to it.

This expansion moves the controlled Eastern border of Europe to non-Schengen Zonecountries further East, as shown below in a map linked from Telegraph.co.uk (see there for more info), where visas will now become more expensive at the border for the non-EU countries:

When Bulgaria and Romania join the EU and the Schengen Zone, the natural axis of power between East and West will be re-esatablished as the line running at the land bottleneck between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. This natural axis of power was recognized as one of the world's most important borders historically by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., editor, The Dynamics of World Power: A Documentary History of United States Foreign Policy 1945-1973, a five-volume compendium later reprinted in paperback in 10 volumes and available through AbeBooks.

The United Kingdom and Ireland, although they are EU members, are not members of the Schengen Zone, whereas Norway and Iceland are members of the Schengen Zone, but are not members of the EU. The Schengen countries are shown at the following map linked from BBC News Europe:

That results in an interlinked Schengen Zone which looks like the following map, linked from Wikipedia, which has an extensive article on the Schengen Agreement (in the map below, the green areas are Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Bulgaria and Romania, who are not Schengen Zone members yet, but who are scheduled to join in the near future:

Not only EU citizens or travelers from Norway or Iceland but also non-EU travelers can travel freely within the Schengen countries if they obtain a Schengen Visa.

Such a Schengen Visa (issued in various categories) among other thinigs are not required for visitors from North America, Japan, most of South America, Australia, New Zealand. See the European Union visa lists at Wikipedia.

The map below linked from Wikipedia shows the Schengen Visa requirement worldwide:

Dark Blue - EU member states
Light Blue - Special visa-free provisions (Schengen Agreement, OCT or other)
Red - Visa required to enter the EU - annex I countries (negative list)
Green - Visa-free access to the EU for 90 days - annex II countries (positive list)
Grey - Visa-status unknown

Interesting is the unflattering comparison (for North America) of the European Schengen Zone with US-Canada relations (see the comments to that posting).

For some comments about the Schengen expansion, see the blogosphere at:
- Jon Worth's Euroblog - Schengen: it's bad both ways according to the UK media and
Schengen enlargement - let’s start the debate in the UK too and take his EU test at Know the EU the Facebook way
- Colin Ross - Schengen Zone gets bigger (greetinigs to the Midlands)
- Edis Bevan - MKNE political information
- Blog - Richard Corbett MEP - The Tories and Schengen (greetings to Yorkshire)
- Slugger O'Toole - So sign up to Schengen...
- Ordovicius - Schengen Expands (with map)
- Forum Flyer Talk - Issues regarding Issuance of Visas
- CIPE Development Blog - Border-free Europe expands
- No More Passport - Just Pass the Port

HAPPY New Year 2008 from EU Pundit : But What is Happiness Around the Globe? Money, Culture, Social Relationships and the Science of Well-Being

2008-01-01T00:00:00.000+01:00

We have posted previously about happiness at our blog LawPundit, including Happiness Is ... Living in the Right Country and it has been the subject of other bloggers, such as The Countess, who writes:

"... the Dalai Lama said, "I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we are all seeking something better in life. So, I think, the very motion of our life is toward happiness...""

If we are to believe Daniel Kahneman, via Marginal Revolution, Nobel Prize winner in Economics in 2002, writing at Edge, then there is a very strong correlation between happiness and wealth (material prosperity), quite contrary to the old saw that money will not make you happy:

"Humans everywhere, from Norway to Sierra Leone, apparently evaluate their life by a common standard of material prosperity, which changes as GDP increases. The implied conclusion, that citizens of different countries do not adapt to their level of prosperity, flies against everything we thought we knew ten years ago. We have been wrong and now we know it. I suppose this means that there is a science of well-being, even if we are not doing it very well."

Seen on a very broad scale, material prosperity is of course important to happiness. People on the brink of starvation or suffering from serious health problems are not going to be as happy as if they were healthy. This is shown by Adrian White's Satisfaction with Life Index (shown at Wikipedia):

"The concept of happiness, or satisfaction with life, is currently a major area of research in economics and psychology, most closely associated with new developments in positive psychology. It has also become a feature in the current political discourse in the UK."

International Ranking (2006)

Rank	Country	SWL	Rank	Country	SWL
1	Denmark	273.33	90	Japan	206.67
1	Switzerland	273.33	90	Yemen	206.67
3	Austria	260	92	Portugal	203.33
3	Iceland	260	93	Sri Lanka	203.33
5	The Bahamas	256.67	94	Tajikistan	203.33
6	Finland	256.67	95	Vietnam	203.33
7	Sweden	256.67	96	Iran	200
8	Bhutan	253.33	97	Comoros	196.67
9	Brunei	253.33	98	Croatia	196.67
10	Canada	253.33	99	Poland	196.67
11	Ireland	253.33	100	Cape Verde	193.33
12	Luxembourg	253.33	101	Kazakhstan	193.33
13	Costa Rica	250	102	South Korea	193.33
14	Malta	250	103	Madagascar	193.33
15	Netherlands	250	104	Bangladesh	190
16	Antigua and Barbuda	246.67	105	Republic of the Congo	190
17	Malaysia	246.67	106	The Gambia	190
18	New Zealand	246.67	107	Hungary	190
19	Norway	246.67	108	Libya	190
20	Seychelles	246.67	109	South Africa	190
21	Saint Kitts and Nevis	246.67	110	Cambodia	186.67
22	United Arab Emirates	246.67	111	Ecuador	186.67
23	United States	246.67	112	Kenya	186.67
24	Vanuatu	246.67	113	Lebanon	186.67
25	Venezuela	246.67	114	Morocco	186.67
26	Australia	243.33	115	Peru	186.67
27	Barbados	243.33	116	Senegal	186.67
28	Belgium	243.33	117	Bolivia	183.33
29	Dominica	243.33	118	Haiti	183.33
30	Oman	243.33	119	Nepal	183.33
31	Saudi Arabia	243.33	120	Nigeria	183.33
32	Suriname	243.33	121	Tanzania	183.33
33	Bahrain	240	122	Benin	180
34	Colombia	240	123	Botswana	180
35	Germany	240	124	Guinea-Bissau	180
36	Guyana	240	125	India	180
37	Honduras	240	126	Laos	180
38	Kuwait	240	127	Mozambique	180
39	Panama	240	128	Palestinian Authority	180
40	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	240	129	Slovakia	180
41	United Kingdom	236.67	130	Myanmar	176.67
42	Dominican Republic	233.33	131	Mali	176.67
43	Guatemala	233.33	132	Mauritania	176.67
44	Jamaica	233.33	133	Turkey	176.67
45	Qatar	233.33	134	Algeria	173.33
46	Spain	233.33	135	Equatorial Guinea	173.33
47	Saint Lucia	233.33	136	Romania	173.33
48	Belize	230	137	Bosnia and Herzegovina	170
49	Cyprus	230	138	Cameroon	170
50	Italy	230	139	Estonia	170
51	Mexico	230	140	Guinea	170
52	Samoa	230	141	Jordan	170
53	Singapore	230	142	Syria	170
54	Solomon Islands	230	143	Sierra Leone	166.67
55	Trinidad and Tobago	230	144	Azerbaijan	163.33
56	Argentina	226.67	145	Central African Republic	163.33
57	Fiji	223.33	146	Macedonia	163.33
58	Israel	223.33	147	Togo	163.33
59	Mongolia	223.33	148	Zambia	163.33
60	São Tomé and Príncipe	223.33	149	Angola	160
61	El Salvador	220	150	Djibouti	160
62	France	220	151	Egypt	160
63	Hong Kong	220	152	Burkina Faso	156.67
64	Indonesia	220	153	Ethiopia	156.67
65	Kyrgyzstan	220	154	Latvia	156.67
66	Maldives	220	155	Lithuania	156.67
67	Slovenia	220	156	Uganda	156.67
68	Taiwan	220	157	Albania	153.33
69	East Timor	220	158	Malawi	153.33
70	Tonga	220	159	Chad	150
71	Chile	216.67	160	Côte d'Ivoire	150
72	Grenada	216.67	161	Niger	150
73	Mauritius	216.67	162	Eritrea	146.67
74	Namibia	216.67	163	Rwanda	146.67
75	Paraguay	216.67	164	Bulgaria	143.33
76	Thailand	216.67	165	Lesotho	143.33
77	Czech Republic	213.33	166	Pakistan	143.33
78	Philippines	213.33	167	Russia	143.33
79	Tunisia	213.33	168	Swaziland	140
80	Uzbekistan	213.33	169	Georgia	136.67
81	Brazil	210	170	Belarus	133.33
82	China	210	171	Turkmenistan	133.33
83	Cuba	210	172	Armenia	123.33
84	Greece	210	173	Sudan	120
85	Nicaragua	210	174	Ukraine	120
86	Papua New Guinea	210	175	Moldova	116.67
87	Uruguay	210	176	Democratic Republic of the Congo	110
88	Gabon	206.67	177	Zimbabwe	110
89	Ghana	206.67	178	Burundi	100

Nevertheless, Kahneman's remarks surely oversimplify the issue in thinking that happiness can all be narrowed down to facts and figures, or that happiness would be the same everywhere if everyone had the same material prosperity, which flies in the face of the experience of all of us, that there are many happy people of modest means and many unhappy people of great means.

As Ed Diener and Shigehiro Oishi write in The Nonobvious Social Psychology of Happiness:

"Bradburn (1969), in his classic seminal work on well-being, found that social relationships were one of the strongest correlates of positive emotions.... Newer evidence now suggests that close social relationships are not simply correlates of well-being, but may have causal force.... Many people focus on wealth when they pursue happiness, but research on social relationships suggests that they can be more important than material prosperity to subjective well-being. The word needs to be spread – it is important to work on social skills, close interpersonal ties, and social support in order to be happy. It is a mistake to value money over social relationships. For instance, we found that students who value money more than love are dissatisfied with their lives...."

Take a look at the happiness quotes found at many pages on the Internet, e.g. Wisdom Quotes.

Our own favorite quotation in this regard is from Abraham Lincoln, because we think that expectations determine happiness on a day to day basis. Abe said (quoted here from Quote World):

"People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be."

Tomorrow's Europe and Major European Union EU Issues by Deliberative Polling

2007-12-04T15:01:00.000+01:00

THE EU DELIBERATIVE POLLING EXPERIMENT :
"TOMORROW'S EUROPE"

Via the Stanford News Service we were altered to an October 10, 2007 Stanford Report by Lisa Trei on Polling that puts Europe in one room that pointed to an experiment in deliberative polling for the EU held in Brussels in which 362 people from 27 EU countries, representing 21 different languages, for three days discussed the future of Europe in a program called "Tomorrow's Europe", as coordinated by Notre Europe and sponsored by Allianz-AGF as the organizational sponsor as well as by sponsors Thalys, Foundation Open Society Institute - a Soros Foundations Network, Renée B. Fisher Foundation, and the Hippocrene Foundation.

The reason for the experiment was explained by its conductor, Stanford Professor James S. Fishkin, as the phenomenon of a "democratic deficit" in the EU. Lisa Trei wrote in this regard:

"According to Fishkin, the EU has turned to deliberative polling to address a so-called "democratic deficit"—a perception of many Europeans that they cannot take part in EU-related debates because they are too complex and technical."

RESULTS OF THE EU DELIBERATIVE POLLING EXPERIMENT:
TOMORROW'S EUROPE

In Citizens resist expansion of European Union, support later retirement, Lisa Trei produces a summary of the results of that EU deliberative polling experiment "Tomorrow's Europe".

Topics covered were:

EU enlargement - EU citizens find that enlargement has been too fast and they are cautious about admitting more countries to the EU

National Sovereignty and qualified majority voting - EU citizens put their own national sovereignty first and were not ready for weighted systems of majority voting (i.e. qualified majority voting)

Pension systems and pension policies

The role of the EU in the world, including the problem of Russia, energy supply issues, and diplomatic relations

The European Economy Since 1945 and Beyond

2007-03-28T22:22:00.000+02:00

Via CaryGEE,

Sheri Berman, of political science fame at Barnard College,

captivates our attention with a New York Times book review
of axe-bearing Berkeley economist Barry Eichengreen's

"The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond".

It is definitely a book which we are adding to our reading list, and not because we share with Eichengreen the experience of once having been a Fellow in Kiel, Germany.

We live in Europe and can applaud whole-heartedly Eichengreen's correct observation that capitalism alone is not enough to run a successful and effective capitalist system - you also have to have the modern institutions required to run such a system - and these are often sorely lacking in many parts of Europe.

The Bachelor's Degree is Coming to Europe

2007-03-28T13:47:00.000+02:00

In our previous posting regarding Citizendium, we noted that contributors to Citizendium will be reviewed by "CZ Constables", volunteers who are required to have a bachelor's degree.

This requirement of a bachelor's degree by Citizendium mirrors the process of reform for "education by degrees" going on now throughout Europe (see the Bologna Process) and the rest of the world, where it used to be the case (and still often is) that every country had (has) its own "provincial" educational degree system, which caused (and causes) enormous unnecessary confusion internationally in determining the equivalence and accreditation of degrees.

Germany here is a good example, where the Bachelor's degree (and the subsequent Masters degree) are now replacing the antiquated German system of college degrees by the year 2010.

There is no doubt in our mind, as mandated by the demands of modern civilization, that the question "do you have a high school diploma" will be replaced in coming years with the question "do you have a bachelor's degree?"

European Law Monitor : A Subscription Service for Alerts, Legislation Tracking, Advice and Research

2007-03-20T03:55:00.000+01:00

Dear Law Pundit Readers: We provide this posting as public service information. Please note that we have no affiliation with the website described below and that this posting does not represent an evaluation or endorsement of the services offered there. We specifically disclaim any and all liability for any click to or use of such services. This is an information posting only.

Although the European Law Monitor website provides a good deal of "free" information, the European Law Monitor is intended to be a subscription service online which describes itself as:

"[A] not-for-profit, non-political, pan-European information service that aims to provide citizens and organisations across Europe with the ability to find and track new EU proposals, and provide a Europe wide platform for interested parties to exchange opinions and co-operate in presenting their views to European legislators."

There are various levels of subscription prices for alert and legislation tracking services:

Subscription Level / Service	Bronze	Silver	Gold	Rep.
Alert newsletters	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Enhanced search results	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Download full text of proposals	10 /Yr	Yes	Yes	Yes
View current status position on legislation	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Legislation tracking	-	Yes	Yes	Yes
Access legislation forums	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Additional users (no extra cost)	-	5	10	Yes
Quick search link to MEP committees	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
User entries in representation database	-	-	-	Yes
Organisation promotional profile in representation database	-	-	-	Yes
Legal research	-	Option	20 Hrs	Option
Annual subscription - including VAT	£14.95	£99.95	£1175	£1175*

*Special concessionary rates apply for not-for-profits actively representing at EU level"

The rates applicable to "First Aid*" Legal Advice and Research are:

"£600 a year – this gives you 8 hours of legal advice, research and guidance per year (cost includes Silver Subscription).

£1000 a year – this gives you 20 hours of legal advice, research and guidance per year (Gold Subscription).

£2000 a year – This is an ongoing service contract, where we provide legal guidance, research and guidance throughout the year.

A tailored package to suit NGOs or businesses providing an outsourced "virtual in-house" legal department can also be provided."

Note that the asterisk above (*) means as follows:

"This service is a "First Aid" and research service only. European Law Monitor does not undertake representational work and therefore we are unable to represent you in courts and tribunals. The advice that we give is limited to general information on your rights and obligations in European Community law and its application to UK law based on the information you provide, and is not a substitute for the detailed specific advice and assistance of a lawyer acting for you."

The website legal research concept is most interesting and potentially useful to persons and organizations in legal or business fields involved in European Union matters.

Europe and Eurovision 2007 : And the Winner will be ... we think ... RUSSIA

2007-03-20T03:47:00.000+01:00

Where does Europe begin and where does it end? Go East young man?

Political maps (e.g. Worldatlas.com) do not conform entirely to other maps of "Europe" which can also be drawn, for example, a map of the participant countries in the 52nd Eurovision Song Contest 2007.

The expansion of the Eurovision Song Contest can be seen over time at the individual maps on the following pages (from Wikipedia), which show the growth of modern Europe as a cultural unity on a broad "musical scale" - expanding Eastward:

1956 · 1957 · 1958 · 1959 · 1960 · 1961 · 1962 · 1963 · 1964 · 1965 · 1966 · 1967 · 1968 · 1969 · 1970 · 1971 · 1972 · 1973 · 1974 · 1975 · 1976 · 1977 · 1978 · 1979 · 1980 · 1981 · 1982 · 1983 · 1984 · 1985 · 1986 · 1987 · 1988 · 1989 · 1990 · 1991 · 1992 · 1993 · 1994 · 1995 · 1996 · 1997 · 1998 · 1999 · 2000 · 2001 · 2002 · 2003 · 2004 · 2005 · 2006 · 2007

Normal political relations among nations are often preceded by goodwill cooperation at the levels of economics, athletics, and inter-cultural exchange of music groups. The Eurovision Song Contest is one example of the "feeling" of European unity being created by music, culture and sports - rather than by politics.

The 52nd Eurovision Song Contest will be broadcast by YLE (English pages) from Helsinki's Hartwall Areena, with the semi-final being held on 10 May 2007 and the final on 12 May 2007. Sponsors of the event are TeliaSonera (Nordic and Baltic communications) as the "Presenting Partner" and Nobel Biocare as "Official Partner". Sponsors are important in enabling the presentation of cultural media events.

Forty-two (42) countries are participating in the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest.

Previews of the songs can be heard through links provided at Eurovision and Eurovision Nation.

And the Winner ... we think will be ... RUSSIA.

We try each year to predict in advance who might win and this year have listened to the songs now available online. There are already even betting odds online, e.g. at BetFair. Such odds are by no means infallible and we would never rely on them or advise others to do so, but they do give some idea of what songs may have the best chance of winning and which not.

We always try to be neutral in our judgments, trying not to have favorites in terms of countries. After all, this is MUSIC. What makes a "HIT" is the fact that it stands out from the mass of average compositions and performances by its unique character.

This year, we are particularly impressed by this music:

Russia has an excellent entry, with a very smart song title, Song #1, by Serebro, which is definitely bound to be a hit regardless of Eurovision by virtue of the topicality of its music (beat, rhythm), though we are not fans of its lyrics, which we find to be a bit too vulgar for our tastes, but then again, the masses love cheap vulgarity - this is RHYTHM as POP. Russia is the last symbol that Western Europe is mixing with the East - a process visible throughout Europe - and this song in its Eastern adaptation of Western music reflects that change. We think that the other countries have been waiting for Russia to come up with a Nr. 1 song and this is it.

Bulgaria - Elitsa Todorova & Stoyan Yankoulov - Voda (Water)
has a unique song and presentation that combines many fundamental elements of music that are common to many human cultures, cultures today in opposition, but perhaps tomorrow in union, it is a great beat that gets you out of your seat . . . refreshing, primordial - this is the song with the BEAT - the song that in our opinion will be best remembered from Eurovision 2007 in coming years)

Serbia - Marija Šerifović - Molitva (Prayer)
presents a truly melodious song, superbly sung - this is the song with the MELODY.

We also personally like the VIVACIOUS song
Ven a bailar conmigo (Come and Dance With Me) by Guri Schanke of Norway

and the operetta-like and ETHEREAL
Cvet z juga by Alenka Gotar (Flower of the Sun) of Slovenia
both of which accord to our general musical taste in listening.

We like the music of Ireland's They Can't Stop The Spring by Dervish, which mentions Latvia in its lyrics, though we doubt if a political song has much of a chance to win an Eurovision Song Contest. It is too POLITICAL.

We are by our origin of course partial to Latvia, but the Latvian song selection each year seems to be marked by a great deal of risk - which has on the one hand led Latvia to win the Eurovision Song Contest in 2002, but in some other years has led to some real voting disasters among the juries. This year Latvia presents a song entitled "This Night" (Questa Notte) and sung in Italian by 6 tenors (one of the tenors is Italian, having come to Latvia in 2001). The Latvian song can thus be described as - NOCTURNAL.

An Italian song will bring Latvia no Italian votes, as Italy is not participating in the Eurovision Song Contest this year at all, due to unfortunate internal politics - forgetting that MUSIC is paramount. Latvia is singing in Italian for Italy . . . .

Maybe Italy has been singing the wrong songs at Eurovision or sending the wrong people to Eurovision as participants .... The 2007 Greek participant in Eurovision, Christos Dantis, for example, used Italian Adriano Celentano's music in the past with great success (though not in Eurovision). We read the following about Italian music:

"Italy is a country of great culture that was developed during great many centuries and made an influence upon the cultures of the other nations. Italian music of different genres and trends are world famous. Classical operas composed by great Italian classical musicians have been performing till now in the most theaters of every country of the world. The modern music is no exception. Pop Italian music has the roots in 1960s, but the genre gained the popularity in 1980s with appearing great many famous male Italian pop singers such as Angelo Branduardi, Adriano Celentano, Al Bano, Toto Cutugno, Den Harrow, etc.

The main reason why Italian pop music became popular in other countries is its national style with roots in Mediterranean folklore music. Italian sound is full of energy, rhythmical melodies are easily memorized, beautiful voices and Italian lyrics make the songs original and unforgettable. Latin traditions and English style of music, as well as American rock-and-roll made an impact upon the development of Italian pop music. But Italian performers and musicians always try to find their unique styles."

For Italy not to compete in Eurovision is sad for Europe, and sad for Italy. It is a decision by Italy through which no one wins, and everyone loses. Decisions like that should be avoided.

There is of course a great deal of grumbling everywhere, not just in Italy, that neighboring nations vote in Eurovision song contests for neighboring nations when juries cast their musical ballots, but past song contests show clearly that when a song is really bad, no one votes for it, not even the neighboring nations. And when a song is really good, then almost everyone votes for it, regardless. But of course, there is still favoritism.

But who will then totally eliminate the blindness of provinciality and local favoritism from Europe? Eurovision? Not a chance. Europe is a very provincial place. We live here and we see this daily. This is not just a problem of the Eurovision Song Contest. Look at the institutions and funding of the European Union - are they also not marked by territorial nepotism and favoritism? Why should Italy - which itself is very provincial - expect Europe to be different than Italy itself is? This is unreasonable.

PROVINCIAL is also a description that can be appended to many of the songs that numerous countries have sent to the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest - and - because of that same provinciality, those countries can only lose. Only songs that somewhere within them have a UNIVERSAL appeal can gather enough votes from ALL other countries and win.

This is why France, for example, always loses in Eurovision, because it sings its perpetual chanson for France, but not for the world, and the 2007 French song for Eurovision is a perfect example of this, titled L'amour à la Française (A French kind of love).

It is this same perpetual French provinciality which through such things as the negation of the Constitution of the European Union, has greatly hurt Europe, which needs UNIVERSALITY.

When e.g. ABBA sang its songs - it sang for everyone - and that is what made ABBA popular throughout the world. We need more ABBA in Europe and less the French idea that some country or people have some kind of hold on "love", which they do not. LOVE belongs to all.

There are other factors as well in the musical equation. Music has also evolved in recent years due to the technological and media advancements possible in the digital age. "Techno" music may not be everyone's taste, but it is a logical musical evolution given the possibilities offered by modern music technology.

Similarly, purists may scorn the modern collaboration of groups such as the The Three Tenors, but Plácido Domingo, José Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti have by their trio made "serious music" far more popular than it ever was before.

Music, like the world - and mankind, is in constant evolution.

One mistake that many countries make in picking their Eurovision songs is to rely on old formulas that previously were successful, which worked "fresh" when first performed, but copies of which are "stale" and "worn out" when presented in subsequent competition years. Songs which catch the "pulse" of TODAY, which have a professional, lively original or unique presentation and which also conform to certain unwritten limits and demands of artistic decency and presentation will always be successful, and that was why Lordi won for Finland in Eurovision 2006. Even though their music was "hard rock" and even though there were monster costumes and a theatre's "camp" flair, it was all still quite "presentable" and "original".

The musical presentations of several countries in 2007 in our opinion clearly overstep the limits of normal artistic decency for this kind of musical TV programming and will surely be rewarded by juries with few or no points. The themes of horror and nuclear war are not music in our book, but its antithesis. We listen to music for relaxation, entertainment or positive stimulation, and not for simple extensions of the bad news and ideas that we see daily on the news channels.

This does not mean that we should revert to the age of innocence in our music. We see that the Swedish entry, The Worrying Kind by the Ark, is favored by some, but we think that this presentation is really for 12-year olds. We hope that it has no serious chance of winning the Eurovision Song Contest, which should aim at a more mature audience. We also definitely agree that a part of that song sounds very similar to Barry Mason's song Love grows (where my rosemary grows) as recorded by Edison Lighthouse in 1970.

How things have changed since the glorious days of ABBA.

Flying the Flag for You by Scooch, the highly-rated United Kingdom entry, is interesting because of its theme of air travel, especially for our pilot friends, but we have trouble finding any real beat, rhythm or melody in this song. This is an ephemeral song, heard today, gone tomorrow.

We think that the problem in the UK is one found in music everywhere, which is that postmodern music in the post-millennium era has yet to find a clear direction in the process of change. Much current music shows where we have been - but where are we going?

When that is in doubt - mankind traditionally turns to its roots.

We definitely think that the Bulgarian song Voda "Water" goes back to the origins of all living things, and perhaps that is where we should start looking for what is to come, both in Europe, as also the world - "pure water".

We think Russia will win the competition, but Voda "Water" is our favorite song in Eurovision 2007.

European Union Legal System and Online Sources

2007-03-04T01:52:00.000+01:00

THE EU LEGAL SYSTEM

The European Union is a democracy governed by the rule of law. The EU Treaties provide that "The Union is founded on the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law, principles which are common to the Member States."

The EU legal portal is EUR-Lex, which provides free access to the EU law database in 20 languages.

EU Treaties and EU Law

The precise legal structure of the EU is complex due to the history of its development. That legal structure is also frustratingly difficult to document online because the European Union continuously changes the URLs of its website pages and its links, so that the picture about the European Union which emerges online is a mass of confusion that probably accurately reflects the EU reality. We update our links to the EU as we can, but it is often a hopeless task because there is often no logic in the EU online system, which has been a chaos for years.

Making things more difficult are improbables such as the fact that: "The Treaty of Amsterdam [1997] changed the articles of the Treaty on European Union [1992], identified by letters A to S, into numerical form." In other words, there is no continuity of articles of the main treaties.

When one compares the stability and clarity of the comparatively laconic United States Constitution over the last 200 years, the European Union treaties, barely 50 years old, are a hopeless mass of verbiage and pretentiousness. This mass confusion in the European Union treaties is typical for what happens when incompetent and posturing politicians and bureaucrats from many nations are given responsibility for formulating important legal matters of State which people trained in law should be reducing to clear and concise statements of law.

Primary sources for the legal system of the EU are the Treaties, especially those relating to the Community (EEC, EC) and to the Union (EU), which are found online in both original as well as consolidated form. Consolidated texts are useful as they reflect amendments made by later treaties. However, such consolidations have no force of law. Only the original treaty text is the actual law. One great advantage of the EU Constitution, if ratified, is its official consolidation of the current chaotic legal structure of the EU into one document (except for EURATOM). However, the way that things now stand, given the sabotage of that EU Constitution by France and the Netherlands, paradoxically the two countries receiving the most agricultural aid from the EU, ratification of that Constitution will probably never occur.

Without a constitution, the EU is governed - for the time being - by the community acquis (acquis communautaire), which is

" the body of common rights and obligations which bind all the Member States together within the European Union. It is constantly evolving and comprises:
· the content, principles and political objectives of the treaties;
· Community legislation and the case law of the Court of Justice;
· the declarations and resolutions adopted by the Union;
· measures relating to the common foreign and security policy;
· measures relating to justice and home affairs;
· international agreements concluded by the Community and those concluded by the Member States between themselves in the field of the Union's activities.
When further countries join the European Union, full compliance with the Community acquis is one of the requisites for accession."

THE EU TREATIES

There are four founding European Treaties: (see also EU Parliament fact sheets)
1. The Treaty of Paris (signed 1951, effective 1952 - see also the Schuman Plan) established the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which began the process of European integration.
2 & 3. The Treaties of Rome (signed 1957, effective 1958) added two more communities, establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM). The name of the EEC was changed to European Community (EC) by the Maastricht Treaty (see below), continuing the precedent of adding more confusion to the European picture were enough confusion already existed.
4. The Treaty on European Union, also known as the Maastricht Treaty (signed 1992, effective 1993) changed the name of the European Economic Community (EEC) to European Community (EC) and created a new entity called the European Union (EU). Note that the articles of the Maastricht Treaty are later renumbered by the Treaty of Amsterdam.

The following treaties made significant amendments to the treaty structure:

The Merger Treaty (signed 1965, effective 1967) provided for a single Commission and a single Council for the then three European Communities.

The Single European Act (SEA) (effective 1987) made modifications toward a single Internal Market.

The Treaty of Amsterdam (Amsterdam Treaty, signed 1997, effective 1999) amended and renumbered the EU and EC Treaties, appending consolidated versions of those treaties to the treaty. The articles of the EU Treaty, originally lettered A to S, were now ordered numerically.

The Treaty of Nice (signed 2001, effective 2003) enabled the enlargement of the EU.

People often refer to the THREE PILLARS of the European Union. These are:

The FIRST PILLAR. The first pillar is The Community, as set out in the Treaties and covering e.g. Union citizenship, Community policies, Economic and Monetary Union (i.e. a single market and a single currency).
The SECOND PILLAR. The second pillar is common foreign and security policy, which comes under Title V of the EU Treaty.
The THIRD PILLAR. The third pillar is police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters, which comes under Title VI of the EU Treaty.

These pillars are important designations for decisionmaking by the Council of the European Union. For matters involving the first pillar, a qualified majority vote of member governments is required for decision. For the second and third pillars, decisions are intergovernmental and Member States must reach a consensus, i.e. unanimity. For certain controversial matters, this distinction leads to differences among governments as to the assignment of those matters to a given pillar, since that assignment directly affects the majorities which have to be achieved to implement a particular decision.

EU LAWS, REGULATIONS, DIRECTIVES, DECISIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS & OPINIONS

Laws (Acts) of the European Union are initiated by the EU Commission and approved by codecision of both the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament (see Articles 251-254 of the EC Treaty and glossary, as also step-by-step and law-making flow chart).

Several types of secondary legislation also exist (Article 249 of the EC Treaty):

Regulations. "A regulation shall have general application. It shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States."

Directives. "A directive shall be binding, as to the result to be achieved, upon each Member State to which it is addressed, but shall leave to the national authorities the choice of form and methods."

Decisions. "A decision shall be binding in its entirety upon those to whom it is addressed."

Recommendations and opinions. "Recommendations and opinions shall have no binding force."

General Law Searches

Search by EU Title or Text
Search by Subject Matter
Search by EU Date
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Search the Official Journal

The Official Journal (OJ) publishes the laws of the European Union, which have primacy over the national laws of its Member States. The OJ is published daily in 20 languages, consisting of the "L series" on Legislation and the "C series on Information, Preparatory Acts and Notices. Both series were introduced in 1968. The "C series" includes also documents published only digitally. Prior to 1968 there was only one series, sometimes referred to unofficially as the "B series" or as the "P series". The Supplement S to the OJ (which calls for tenders) is published in the TED database in concert with SIMAP, the gateway to EU public procurement.

Specific Legal Searches

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for a EU Regulation, EU Directive, EU Decision, COM final, or European Court case by Year and Number
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European Court Reports

All case-law was published in the single-volume European Court Reports, which, after the recent creation of the Court of First Instance in 1989, now consists of three volumes: I) judgments and opinions of the Court of Justice and opinions of the Advocates-General, II) judgments of the Court of First Instance are published in Volume II, and III) there is a separate publication for the case-law in staff cases: Court of Justice (Sole volume until 1990; Volume I from 1990) Court of First Instance (Volume II from 1990) Staff Cases (from 1995)

To consult a procedure using an exact reference, one can search by procedure reference, by dossier reference and by document reference in the European Parliament, in the European Commission, in the Council of the Union, in other EU institutions, bodies and in legislative acts.

To obtain information on interinstitutional activities and related procedures, one can search by rapporteur, by committee of Parliament, or political group; by Commission Directorate-General, or Council concerned; by subject: by main topic or by words in title of topic; by family or type of procedure; by stage reached in procedure; by event date: actual or forecast; or by legal basis.

Historical Searches

Search by CELEX number

CELEX (Communitatis Europeae LEX) was the previous official fee-based legal database of the EC. It is no longer updated.

Member States of the European Union : Heritage Foundation & WSJ Information on EU Countries : Click Flags for Economic Freedom Info

2007-03-03T20:34:00.000+01:00

Information About Member States of the EU
from Heritage.Org and the WSJ

Map design copyright by LawPundit © 2007

THE EUROPEAN UNION
Click Flags for Information about EU Member States
The Index of Economic Freedom
Business Freedom , Trade Freedom, Fiscal Freedom, Freedom from Government, Monetary Freedom, Investment Freedom, Financial Freedom, Property Rights, Freedom from Corruption, Labor Freedom

Microsoft Threatened with New Fines by the European Commission: What American Law Should NOT Learn from European Law

2007-03-03T20:33:00.000+01:00

We just posted at LawPundit about:

1) the fact that the European Commission some time ago fined Microsof for alleged anti-trust activities and that it had threatened to continue to fine Microsoft several million dollars a day until it opened up its proprietary software to European companies; and

2) the fact that the German government recently expressed great misgivings about the non-transparent non-democratic anonymous legislative and ruling role that the European Commission plays in the current government of Europe.

We now read today in Business Week in an article by Raf Casert out of Brussels, Belgium that Europe threatens new Microsoft fines through the European Commission.

One legal institution that no one in America ever wants to emulate is the European Commission, sadly designed on the basis of greatly inadequate French governmental models, which is an anonymous collection of serendipity bureaucrats that has taken to governing the European Union in a style reminiscent of the old oligarchies of Russia under the motto : we decide, you obey. Democracy is not a word that the European Commission understands and we predict that its non-democratic nature will be its downfall down the road, as we expect the European Parliament to ultimately take over many jobs that the European Commission does today.

As Casert writes, the rule of law does not appear to be a strength at the EU Commission:

"Ronald Cass, chairman of the Washington-based Center for the Rule of Law, said the EU "has taken another step toward turning successful businesses into regulated utilities."

"The Commission's new effort, if pursued, will undermine innovation and take Europe further away from the sort of predictable, stable, sensible legal rules that define the rule of law," Cass said." [link added by LawPundit]

And further....

"Microsoft is challenging the EU's 2004 antitrust ruling -- which resulted in the order to share code and information with rivals at reasonable prices -- at the EU's Court of First Instance. A decision is expected sometime this summer." [link added by LawPundit]

Whatever the decision of that Court, the problem of the European Commission remains, not only for foreign governments and corporations dealing with the European Union, but also for the Europeans themselves, who have created a monster that no one wants, and no one really knows what to do about, yet.

Crossposted to LawPundit.

US Supreme Court Vacates Absurd Punitive Damages Award in Oregon Tobacco Case : What American Law Should Learn from European Law

2007-03-03T16:16:00.000+01:00

Perhaps Phillip Morris USA v. Williams, No. 05-1256 (U.S. Feb. 20, 2007) is the turning point. After changes in style, perhaps we have changes in substance.

Perhaps Phillip Morris USA v. Williams is the case that marks the hoped-for change from the hopelessly antiquated SCOTUS envisioned by such outdated theoreticians as Marjorie Cohn.

FINALLY, at long last, the United States Supreme Court for the first time in decades is saying that "enough is enough" of the absurd money judgments which pervade the American legal system and which have made American jurisprudence the laughing-stock of the legal world.

As written by Professor Stephen B. Presser at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research:

"As the twenty-first century unfolds and commerce becomes more and more globalized, there is a need to harmonize the law of products liability across nations. So far, unfortunately, efforts at harmonization have too often been in the direction of reproducing the costly features of United States tort doctrines — doctrines that have imposed spiraling costs on American manufacturers. [emphasis added]

Even though the European Community recently altered its tort doctrines from a pure fault-based system to strict products liability, there are features of the European legal system that lessen the effects of even strict liability. Consequently, European courts are much less likely to hand out unpredictable and disproportionate damage judgments—unlike American courts, where ruinous verdicts are a potential in too many lawsuits. [emphasis added]

Europe has escaped an American style litigation explosion by erecting barriers to excessive litigation. Such barriers include:

* Absence of contingent fees
* Loser pays winner’s attorney fees
* Discouragement of massive discovery filings
* Lower damage judgments
* Absence of punitive damages
* Non-use of juries in civil cases
* Lower expectations of damages [emphasis added]

Unless similar barriers to excessive litigation are created in the U.S., American companies face an ongoing competitive disadvantage relative to European manufacturers who operate in a more predictable, less costly, and less litigious legal environment. In one case, probably typical, Dow Chemical Corporation estimates that it spends 100 times as much on litigation costs in the U.S. as opposed to Europe.

America prides itself on being the world’s pre-eminent economic superpower, but if American economic preeminence is to survive in a highly competitive global marketplace, there must be changes in the American legal system. We should seek to reproduce here some of the features of the European system of litigation. It is time, in short, to give American firms the same legal protections that European firms enjoy, rather than waiting for Europeans to harmonize their legal systems with their aberrant American cousins." [emphasis added]

As political centrists, we have been waiting for over a year now for a sign from the United States Supreme Court under new Chief Justice John Roberts and new Justice Samuel Alito that things are going to turn for the better in America's highest court.

Phillip Morris USA v. Williams gives us that hope. Absurd punitive damages judgments will be fewer as a result of this absolutely correct decision by the new Roberts-led United States Supreme Court.

It is a court burdened by the legacy of an ineffectual and inconsistent Rehnquist Court, whose main mark is "unfinished business" in a legal system left in turmoil, lagging far behind modern technological developments and unprepared judicially for the digital age. As noted by Joan Biskupic in USA Today:

"Rehnquist helped transform a bench preoccupied with the rights of the poor and disenfranchised into one that usually prefers to leave society's problems to elected legislators."

That conservative, hands-off Rehnquist strategy backfired for over three decades as the legislative qualifications of members of the United States Congress constantly dropped, with the percentage of law-trained representatives becoming ever smaller and necessary legislation becoming rarer and rarer. Additionally, the technological competence that is required in the modern age is simply not present in Congress, either in the legislators or in their staff:

"The United States Congress is increasingly called upon to legislate on a host of technologically complex matters. Unfortunately, relatively few of the 535 Senators and Representatives holding seats in Congress have technical backgrounds or have staff with technical qualifications."

We hold out little hope for the US Congress to improve on this score, since the populist popular election of Congressmen and Congresswomen by a largely uninformed and ignorant public - conditioned to stupidity by soap box television and news media geared to the lowest common denominator - will over the years inevitably lead to increasingly less competent people filling Congressional seats. (The decline of empires in this regard is thus quasi pre-programmed.)

Can the United States Supreme Court pick up the slack in the coming years?

What did the court decide in Williams? The US Supreme Court vacated the egregious punitive damages award in the Oregon tobacco case of Phillip Morris USA v. Williams, as Justice Breyer (age 68), who delivered the opinion of the Court, and Chief Justice Roberts (age 52) and Justices Kennedy (age 70), Souter (age 67) and Alito (age 56), joined in the 5-4 opinion. See here e.g. Robert Barnes at the Washington Post for details.

Justices Stevens (age 86), Ginsburg (age 74), Scalia (age 70) and Thomas dissented, none of these latter Justices apparently understanding the difference between civil and criminal law, and we can only hope that some of those Justices soon go into retirement. Justice John Paul Stevens will be 87 in April and he long ago should have retired. Justice Ginsburg turned 74 in March and Scalia is 70, but two centuries back in his constitutional originalist opinions. Except for Thomas, who often votes octogenerically with Scalia for reasons quagmired in past centuries, the opinions in this case again run pretty much along the lines of age, with the youngest Justices voting for the majority and the oldest Justices dissenting. We pointed to this age factor previously here at LawPundit as something which should be corrected in the future so that Justices and Judges face manadatory retirement age at 70. Period. No exceptions. They should go fishing and enjoy their retirement years rather than making critical decisions in a time which has passed them by.

For those of our readers who do not understand our tirades against the courts and the legislatures, we refer to a book by Professor Larry Kramer, a constitutional scholar who recently became the Dean of the Stanford Law School.

That book,
The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review,New York, Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN: 0-19-516918-2,
is reviewed in Law and Politics Book Review, Vol. 14 No.11 (November 2004), pp.916-926,
by John Michael Eden, Duke University School of Law, john.eden@law.duke.edu, and
by John Paul Ryan, The Education, Public Policy, and Marketing Group, Inc. johnpryan@ameritech.net, where they write:

"It is in light of these baleful features of judicial supremacy that PEOPLE advocates an approach to judicial review that restricts the authority of the Supreme Court. This approach Kramer calls “departmental” or “coordinate” construction. The main virtue of coordinate construction is that the authoritativeness of any particular decision depends “on reactions from the other branches and, through them, from the public” (p.252). While it is unclear precisely how individual citizens are supposed to make their preferences known so that the “other branches” can check particular decisions rendered by the Court, PEOPLE suggests that citizens in the early republic, meaning the period from about 1760 to 1840, “had both a right and a responsibility to act when the ordinary legal process failed,” provided that those very citizens continue to “profess loyalty to the government” and follow the ordinary laws the legitimacy of which was not currently in dispute (p.25)."

We agree with Kramer on the fact that the authority of the Supreme Court (or any court for that matter) is constrained by their impression on us (and you, and everyone else) and our commentary at LawPundit proceeds in that spirit. When the courts commit great blunders and when things are not in order, we call them on it. And that is one element of what Kramer is talking about. WE are the governed, but to be governed in a democracy, we have to give our consent, and for our consent to exist, the RESULTS in the three government branches have to have some semblance of common sense and sanity. Otherewise, you have revolution - and that in part is what we are facing, for example, in the intellectual property law sector, where the institutions of government have been falling on their noses in regulating that area of law, so that a "free" law-free zone of sorts has developed which the law is going to have a difficult time in getting in its grasp again. Caveat emptor.

Crossposted to LawPundit.

MP3 Shows that America is being Trounced by Europe on the Corporate Battlefield

2007-03-03T16:14:00.000+01:00

The MP3 Codec and its Licensing

MP3 is a codec, a standard for compression and decompression of music, developed in Germany by the Fraunhofer Institute.

The word CODEC is formed by the first letters of the words COmpression and DEComprression. MP3 is the short form for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3. Wilson Yuen writes:

"MP3 is currently the most powerful algorithm in a series of audio encoding standards developed under the sponsorship of the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and formalized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)."

The right to license the MP3 codec is owned by the French company Thomson (mp3licensing).

The MP3 Codec is a Standard for Compressing and Decompressing Music Files

MP3 is similar to the much older JPEG standard for graphics, which makes files smaller by removing color information while attempting to retain as much of the original picture intact as possible. MP3 is a two-pass compression system, utilizing Huffman encoding in the second pass, and in the first pass primarily removing music information to make music files smaller than e.g. the original CD versions. The fact that MP3 files are up to 12 times smaller than the original uncompressed files - with minimal loss of music quality - has made the MP3 codec very popular.

MP3 and Similar Standards should not be Subject to Patentability

MP3 is in our opinion one prime example of the kind of "alleged" invention that should never have been granted a patent in the first place (see the MP3 patent discussion here), nor should the alleged technology behind such an invention in any manner be eligible for patent protection. MP3 is a standard - there could easily be others. It is nothing more than a particular method of compressing and decompressing information, applying generally known principles and methods.

The Methods of Compression and Decompression are Limited and Known

There are only a limited number of basic ways in which information can be compressed and decompressed - principally by reducing the information indexed and by better notation of repetition and redundancies. Why should a codec like that be subject to patenting?

Take this sentence as an example of a unit to be compressed:
MP3 is a compression and decompression codec to compress and decompress music files.
We can compress that sentence by just leaving out "compression and decompression", resulting in MP3 is a codec to compress and decompress files, without thus losing much meaning and we can reduce it further by better notation of the word "compress" which still appears twice in the remaining sentence, so that we could then write MP3 is a codec to c. and dec. files. Upon decompression, "c." would again be replaced by the word "compress".

To call a codec an invention stretches the definition of "invention" past logical limits because doing so prohibits others from utilizing similar AND obvious compression methods - which are limited in number by mathematics.

All digital information consists of 1's and 0's, so that any method that can more compactly describe those 1's and 0's is potentially useful for a codec. For example, if we have a picture of 10 lines, each 100 pixels long, and that picture is white for the first 9 lines but contains a black straight line the entire length of the 10th line, then we do not need to make a separate notation for each of these 1000 pixels. Rather, we can treat the first 900 pixels as ALL white (all zeroes) and the last 100 pixels as ALL black (all ones), so that our notation can be short "900 0's in 10 lines and 100 1's in 1 line". If we set our default value to "0" then "100 1's in line 10" is notation enough. The picture is thus compressed. The principle in music is the same. But this recognition is not "an invention".

Although the actual application of any given compression and decompression standard such as JPEG or MP3 is of course more complicated when dealing with large masses of photo or music information, that is fundamentally all there is to it. There is nothing magical about it that needs the protection of patents. MP3 removes musical information that is hard for humans to hear but which microphones pick up. When such information is removed, music files are much smaller.

General Principles of Shorthand were known prior to Christ

General principles of information compression and notation were known long before JPEGs or MP3s came into existence. Shorthand has long been used in writing in law by court reporters (NCRA) and Greek and Roman tachygraphy was known already before the days of Christ. Hebrew language was generally written without vowels, presumably as a form of shorthand. Compression is simply a form of shorthand.

The Machine Rendition of Voice and Music began with Bell and Edison

Limitations of writing systems for recording purposes led man to develop machines for reproducing the human voice and music, which culminated in Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone and Thomas Alva Edison's invention of the phonograph. The patents awarded to Bell and Edison created empires which still thrive today.

AT&T's Patent-Based Monopoly remains Intact

One of the things that the political, corporate and legal establishment in the United States does not appear to appreciate is that patent monopolies, once granted, far outlive the actual duration of patents, and give the holders of those patents - on a silver platter - industrial empires which last centuries. The best example of that in Europe is the post monopoly of Thurn & Taxis, whose family, hundreds of years later, is still one of the wealthiest families in Europe.

Alexander Graham Bell's patents were challenged something like 600 times during his lifetime, but his patent-based monopoly could not be shaken and AT&T (later known as "Ma Bell") went on to control nearly the entire US telephone market, creating one of the most powerful monopolies of the modern business age.

The legal community in the United States appears to be overwhelmed by Ma Bell. The "trustbusters", not understanding that patents were at the root of Ma Bell's power, decided to break up America's biggest and most powerful corporation in 1974. The result has been the creation of a multi-headed hydra of "Baby Bells" which resulted from the break-up of AT&T who now threaten to join together into one great corporation with even greater powers than before. Ma Bell is still quite alive and kicking - patent monopolies, once granted, have a long life.

"Ma Bell Still Has You by the Bells"

One used to say that "Ma Bell Has You by the Calls" (non-native speakers who do not understand that joke should be aware of the American idiom "have someone by the balls").

Part of the Ma Bell legacy is found in the now spun-off Lucent Bell Labs of what is the French company, Alcatel-Lucent (Bell Labs was formerly AT&T Bell Laboratories viz. Bell Telephone Laboratories):

"At its peak, Bell Labs was the premier facility of its type, developing a wide range of revolutionary technologies, including radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, information theory, the UNIX operating system, and the C programming language. There have been 6 Nobel Prizes awarded for work done at Bell Labs."

This 6-Nobel-Prize-producing former American laboratory is now owned by the French.

The Alcatel-Lucent Patents in the Patent Suit Against Microsoft

An American jury has just awarded the French company Alcatel-Lucent $1.5 billion for the patents below, to be paid by Microsoft (but of course, the bill is actually paid ultimately by the American consumer), and Alcatel-Lucent have numerous patent suits more in the pipeline against Microsoft.

Will French ultimately own Microsoft?

US Patent 5,341,457 - Abstract
Perceptual coding of audio signals
"A technique for the masking of quantizing noise in the coding of audio signals is adapted to include geometric interpolation between the thresholds for a tone masking noise and for noise masking a tone, in order to reduce use of bit-rate capability where it is not necessary for transparent or high quality. The technique is usable with the types of channel coding known as "noiseless" or Huffman coding and with variable radix packing. The stereophonic embodiment eliminates redundancies in the sum and difference signals, so that the stereo coding uses significantly less than twice the bit rate of the comparable monaural signal. The technique can be used both in transmission of signals and in recording for reproduction, particularly recording and reproduction of music. Compatibility with the ISDN transmission rates known as 1 B, 2 B and 3 B rates has been achieved."

One of the inventors of the above patent, James David Johnston, retired from AT&T and became an audio architect for Microsoft Corporation. See Perceptual Coding of Audio Signals - A Tutorial. Is that the root of the problem? Johnston is also the inventor of the following patent.

US Patent RE39080
Rate loop processor for perceptual encoder/decoder
This is a reissue application of U.S. Pat. No. 5,627,938 filed Sep. 22, 1994 as application Ser. No. 08/310,898 which is a continuation of application Ser. No. 07/844,811, filed on Mar. 2, 1992, now abandoned, which is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. 07/844,967 filed Feb. 28, 1992, now abandoned, which is a continuation of Ser. No. 07/292,598 filed Dec. 30, 1988 now abandoned.

"A method and apparatus for quantizing audio signals is disclosed which advantageously produces a quantized audio signal which can be encoded within an acceptable range. Advantageously, the quantizer uses a scale factor which is interpolated between a threshold based on the calculated threshold of hearing at a given frequency and the absolute threshold of hearing at the same frequency."

Those are the two patents for which a jury just awarded Alcatel-Lucent $1.5 billion. Not bad considering that Alcatel paid only about $11.5 billion for the entire company Lucent - and that was merely a stock deal, no cash at all. If Alcatel gets similar judgments on its other patent suits, its purchase will have been a STEAL, and we do emphasize the world steal. Lots of money flowing out of America into Parisian coffers.

At the same time, Alcatel-Lucent plans to cut 12500 jobs worldwide (12% in France) - which means more unemployed on the streets and more money for execs such as Patricia J. Russo, whose entire career is littered with thousands of people losing their jobs under her leadership.

European Commission Fines Microsoft

The European Commission found Microsoft to have engaged in anti-trust activities in Europe and fined it $357 million, threatening to continue to fine it several million dollars a day until it opens up its proprietary software to European companies. The European Commissioner for Competition, Neelie Kroes, who imposed the fines, was at the time on the board of directors of
.... Lucent.

France and Germany Seek to Force Apple to Open its iPod DRM

And how about Apple, which is being forced by France and Germany to open its iPod DRM?
Will Apple be another French company soon?

The European Strategy Against Corporate America

On the one hand, European companies are using the Alice in Wonderland US patent laws to relieve American corporations of billions of dollars of cash. On the other hand, European companies and the European Union are forcing American corporations to open their proprietary software to their European competitors and to dismantle their product protection in Europe for the benefit of European products.

Can it really be that corporate America does not understand what is going on?

Crossposted to LawPundit.

German Vice-Chancellor Muntefering Challenges Lawmaking and Presidential Selection Procedures in the European Union

2007-02-27T21:40:00.000+01:00

The European Union has a very dubious system of lawmaking, whereby laws are drafted and proposed by the EU's super-bureaucratic 25000-employee European Commission, rather than by the elected European Parliament.

This has led to a terrible situation whereby the European Union has come to be governed day-to-day by this anonymous body, which is not only not democratically elected but which is following its own specific agenda without any meaningful contact to the wishes of the citizens of the EU Member States.

As reported by Mark Beunderman in the EU Observer, this situation has rightly become a thorn in the eye of Germany, which is one of the main funders of the EU without at the same time having much say about what the EU does. Germany's Vice-Chancellor Franz Muntefering is quoted as saying that:

"We should be asking ourselves the question who decides what is on the agenda in Europe. Only the [European] Commission? Something should change in this respect. More possibilities for political initiatives by the European Parliament would be good," Mr Muntefering, the second-highest member of the German government, told Sueddeutsche Zeitung over the weekend."

Muntefering also criticized the anonymous manner in which the European Commission president is chosen:

"[W]e should think further whether the current system can remain so anonymous and indirect. "

Muntefering is a practical man and not one given to simple speculation in the newspapers. Accordingly, we take his statements to be indicative of serious changes in the offing for the way that the European Union is governed. These changes may not take place immediately, but we are sure they are forthcoming to counteract a non-democratic EU Commission which has become more and more disliked as time goes on.

Sweden Ancient Astronomy and the Gerum Cloak

2007-02-04T01:27:00.000+01:00

Bring on Sherlock Holmes . . .
and at least one lawyer, trained in evidence . . . pro bono publico.

THE GERUM CLOAK MYSTERY

The more than 2000-year old Cloak of Gerum (photos and info below) provides us - as we will show - with the greatest "real" (non-fiction) cloak and dagger mystery of all time, unsolved up to now, but - as we allege - for the most part solved (but not entirely) in this posting.

The technology that we use to solve this mystery is demonstrated in the following graphic - which contains a secret message - to which we give the simple and ultimately helpful clue:
42 (read further below to understand its significance in the context of this posting). Any change to this graphic by, e.g. compression, destroys the secret message:

The mainstream archaeologists recently determined,

via the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities
and the Swedish National Laboratory of Forensic Science
(which "performs laboratory analyses of samples collected from various scenes of suspected crimes" and uses the most modern investigatory criminal forensic techniques available to man - the Scandinavians are indeed top in many scientific and engineering fields)

(stated in our free translation from the Swedish using the assistance of Systran)
that:

"[T]he Gerum Cloak has five cuts made by knife or dagger and that these stabs [if the cloak had been worn at the time] would have struck the body in the chest, abdomen, spine and neck."

This is cloak and dagger at its best. You have an - alleged - ancient cloak and you also have - alleged - multiple dagger incisions, but - thus far - you have no dagger, and no corpse.

Worse, when the Gerum Cloak was subjected to follow-up tests for blood and DNA, none were found. No human remnants. None.

How is this to be explained?

ORIGIN OF THE GERUM CLOAK

The Gerum Cloak, neatly folded and almost perfectly preserved - a great rarity for archaeology - was found in the year 1920¹ by peat bog diggers in Gerumsberget, Sweden, along with three small stones (found sitting on top of the cloak) which from the photos appear to be about the same size as a super-oversized computer mouse, interpreted - questionably - by the mainstream archaeologists as weights to weigh down the cloak in the bog.

PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE GERUM CLOAK

[Please note: All photographs below are copyrighted by their owners. We use them here in reliance on the fair use copyright exception for non-profit research. See the original linked articles for more details about each photograph. For the analysis below, one of the photos used MUST be the original, and we do use it.]

Photograph left above by ATA - Photograph right above (3 small stones) by Falbygdens museum in Falköping, which is also a very important Swedish megalithic site

Photo left above by ATA of cloak 1920 - Photo middle (virtual cloak and stones) & photo right (cloak hung) by Falbygdens museum
Gerum Cloak Overhead View
(Original Photo Essential for Forensics)

ABOVE: Overhead photograph of the Gerum Cloak by Gabriel Hildebrandt / SHM
(The discussion below shows that it is important to use the original photograph for analysis)

Gerum Cloak "On the Table View"

ABOVE: Photograph of the Gerum Cloak investigation, photograph by Christer Åhlin / SHM

The white points on the cloak here played a role in our solution of the mystery.

PHOTOGRAPHS ARE THE KEYS TO SOLVE THE GERUM CLOAK MYSTERY

The lower two photographs above were the key photographs for the solution of this mystery:
1) the table photograph because we wondered what the white points were; and, 2) the overhead photograph because we looked for those white points, wondering where they had vanished.

HOW OLD IS THE GERUM CLOAK? IS IT REALLY A CLOAK SHAPE?

Modern chronological dating shows the Gerum Cloak to originate around several hundred years before the birth of Christ (ca. 360-100 BC). The cloak is thus at least 2000 years old and is the oldest intact piece of "clothing" (or what is alleged to be clothing) ever found in Sweden.

Given its oval nearly elliptical shape, the identification as a cloak (rather than, for example, as a tablecloth or wall tapestry) is however certainly susceptible to doubt. We have many cloaks but we have never seen one with an oval shape and with no cut or incision for the head. The peat bog finders, not knowing what else to do with their finding, threw it over their shoulders as if it were a cloak and it has been regarded as a cloak ever since, but it is most likely NOT a cloak. Indeed, if not a cloak, then the dagger marks of the archaeologists are not stab marks at all, which seems likely given their overly wide distribution on the cloak, mostly near the edges.

The shape of the cloak, as we shall see, as well as the dagger slashes on the cloak, are, however, important clues to the resolution of the real secret of the cloak.

WHAT ABOUT THE THREE STONES?

If someone had committed a murder and was trying to hide a bloodied cloak, they would not use three such unusually-shaped and differently weighted stones this small to sink the cloak in a bog, nor would they first fold the cloak neatly. The fact that the cloak was still neatly folded when found indicates additionally that the stones had no effect on sinking the cloak, which, if effective, would have destroyed the folding. Rather, it appears that the cloak and stones were intentionally and neatly hidden together - but possibly too near an inviting bog, probably by someone who thought that he or someone else might recover them soon. Perhaps they were hidden in the bog by someone thinking they could not be found there, would not sink too deeply and could be retrieved shortly. But no one came to retrieve them and so they sank slowly (retaining the folding) into the bog which preserved them for over 2000 years.

The bottom stone looks almost like an iron for ironing clothes or fabric, i.e. something to slide along a surface, and in my opinion the upper two smaller stones appear to be made to fit exactly on top of the larger stone. Each of these smaller stones has what appears to be a sculpted straight edge, suggesting a maneuverable usage intended for marking something, much like modern markers for lines or locations on a map, perhaps a kind of angle-setter? We leave this issue to the engineers out there in cyberspace.

WHAT IS THE REAL SECRET OF THE GERUM CLOAK?

Does the Gerum Cloak hide a different real secret, and if so, what is it?

We have discovered that all that is required to reveal the hidden secret of the Gerum Cloak are the right tools and the right detective work in using them.

With apologies to other forensic experts, but in the case of the Gerum Cloak, every internet user potentially possesses tools necessary for decipherment success in the instant case.

FORENSIC SCIENCE, STEP BACK : WE ONLY NEED ONE PHOTO PLUS PSP

All that one needs to decipher the Gerum Cloak are:

1) an otherwise unformatted original overhead photograph copy of the Gerum Cloak laid down flat, such as the original photograph of Gabriel Hildebrandt (who we do not know personally) reproduced above, and;

2) a graphics program such as Paint Shop Pro ("PSP", by Corel, formerly JASC) having a "threshold level" menu option for showing the most minimal color differences in any image. We use the German version of PSP 7.00, where the threshold value menu option is found under the colors menu as the option "Schwellenwert": [Farben/Farbeinstellungen/Schwellenwert]. Note that this menu is activated only after an image is loaded into PSP.

MENU OPTION FOR THRESHOLD VALUE PERMITS PRO SLEUTHING

The ability to depict very precisely the minutial differences in color of adjacent pixels on a photograph allows the identification of marks or etchings on surfaces which are as good as invisible to the human eye or which can otherwise only be found with great difficulty - or not at all - by more modern technologies. To our knowledge, we were the first ever to use precisely this graphics technology in archaeology, already applying it to the study of figures found on photographs of megaliths, megalithic sites and petroglyphs (see Stars Stones and Scholars).

GABRIEL HILDEBRANDT'S OVERHEAD PHOTOGRAPH OF THE GERUM CLOAK AND THE COLOR THRESHOLD METHOD OF FINDING HIDDEN FIGURES

Using Gabriel Hildebrandt's original photograph above and available at Gabriel Hildebrandt / SHM, anyone having the graphics program Paint Shop Pro (it may also work with other graphics programs having a comparable menu option) can duplicate our results by using the threshold settings that we provide below. The three rows below show the color blue (#0000ff) progressively differentiated by 1) brightness, 2) saturation and 3) hue.

Each of the 46 colors above (48 boxes but 3 are identical) is a different RGB blue color. The differences in blue in each color row above are very hard to discern with the human eye, though the eyes do "see" these colors, as shown by our comparison of the leftmost and rightmost elements of each row (you need true color on your monitor to see all of these colors).

However, such subtle color changes, when close to each other, are turned by the brain into flowing color schemes by a process called optical mixing. This facility of our brain was exploited in Neo-Impressionism, a school of art founded by Georges Seurat, whose computer-futuristic and greatly underestimated Pointillism (try it out here) consisted of painting by small dots too small to be seen individually, which gave his paintings a tremendous brilliance because of the miniscule white space surrounding those dots. Pointillism clearly anticipated pixel technology on television screens and computer monitors.

In a similar way, the PSP threshold value menu option permits us to isolate real but otherwise imperceptible color differences between pixels and to discover actual figures present in an image which we otherwise would not recognize as such.

In PSP the color threshold settings can be given a minimum value of 1 and a maximum of 255.

Below you see Hildebrandt's original photo viewed using the Paint Shop Pro color threshold settings of 81 in the first case, and 85, 86 and 87 in the second case. We presume these settings work identically on all computers running the same program. Run the threshold values on the original photograph first and not on a resized version of it, which gives less accurate results:

The Hildebrandt photograph shown at PSP threshold level 81
Look at the middle of the above 81-PSP-thresholded image. What do you see?
Lots of dots, right?
Do you see anything familiar in those dots?

The Hildebrandt photograph shown at threshold levels 85, 86 and 87
--We call your attention again to the center of those three Gerum Cloak images, using PSP threshold settings of 85, 86 and 87, and we ask you, what do you see? If you see nothing recognizable, we suggest you call in your resident astronomer for advice and assistance.

DECIPHERMENT OF THE GERUM CLOAK

Do not read further here
if you do not want us to tell you what you see
and/or if you want to decipher the Gerum Cloak on your own. Otherwise, read on.

What those images clearly show in the middle of the Gerum Cloak - thresholded at 81 by PSP - are the stars of Ursa Major (the Big Dipper, the Great Bear, the Wain), Virgo, Boötes, Hercules and Lyra - and they show those stars pretty exactly. Recall that we are seeing here just a tiny photographic image of a large piece of fabric. More sophisticated photo equipment taking OPTICAL close-ups of sections of the Gerum Cloak will give even better results.

Below are two digitally-made close-ups of the Gerum Cloak photo. In the first we compare the Gerum Cloak with the stars of Ursa Major, Virgo, Boötes, Hercules and Lyra as shown by Starry Night Pro. We have a clear match of stars.

In the second close-up we view the images representing the threshold values of 85, 86 and 87 as compared to the stars produced by Starry Night Pro. Opposite of Ursa Major we clearly find the stars of Draco marked on the Gerum Cloak (this is at the North Ecliptic Pole):

Some of the star groups in the course of life of the Gerum Cloak appear to have been painted over with an appropriate figure, for example, Cygnus, which is shown as a bird (head at the top middle) at threshold level 74, although the stars iota and kappa Cygnii are clearly identifiable:

Also important are the images which result for the stars Orion and Scorpio - which are across from each other in the heavens and build a traditional historic ancient celestial meridian. At the identical PSP threshold value of 54 for both of these groups of stars, a threshold identity which suggests that these stellar groups were both marked on the Gerum Cloak in the same manner at nearly the same time, the main stars of Orion and Scorpio can clearly be identified (see the close-ups in the final decipherment image below.

Knowing now the position of the above stellar groupings on the Gerum Cloak, we can possibly identify the knife or dagger marks on that cloak, as intentional dagger slashes acting as permanent edges for major astronomical lines of orientation, specifically the Equinoxes and Solstices and the 24° degree axis tilt of the Earth relative to ancient cardinal points at Orion and Scorpio. Perhaps the cloak was hung on an ancient wooden wall using sharp objects at the focal areas. Seasonally seen - the tilt of the Earth's axis is "equalized" at both the Autumn and Spring Equinoxes, when the days and nights are equally long everywhere, and when the ecliptic (angled 24° to the celestial equator) crosses the celestial equator at the two crossing nodes.

THE FINAL DECIPHERMENT GRAPHIC FOR THE GERUM CLOAK

Armed with the above knowledge, knowing that an oval viz. elliptical shape is the shape of the heavens, it is easy to see, using the threshold value of 81 as the basis for the graphic below, that the Gerum Cloak is a sky map of the heavens of the northern hemisphere. It is an ancient planisphere.

We have added the positions of the North Ecliptic Pole and the North Celestial Pole to our decipherment graphic for purposes of understanding, but these circles are not marked on the Gerum Cloak directly as far as we can tell, although the fact that the heaven's pole positions are centered in the middle of the cloak would seem clearly to demonstrate a knowledge of those positions on the part of the cloak's makers, as we have seen for Scandinavia in the rock drawings.

If the Gerum Cloak is a cloak at all, then it is similar in function to the heavenly cape found in e.g. Verse 33854 of the Latvian Dainas,² where the Moon is seen to ride his steed in the sky with a cape of stars on his back. It was surely an important motif in ancient astronomy. Indeed, Johann Bayer, a German lawyer and amateur astronomer, published his famous star atlas Uranometria in the year 1603 with Diana pictured on the front cover of the book as the Moon goddess wearing a cape of stars. When we view some smaller modern fabrics, such as "banners", for example, the flags of the United States of America or the European Union, then we see that the stars have not lost their importance as symbols of choice.

We hope that the archaeologists in Sweden, perhaps with the help of this posting, may elevate the Gerum Cloak to the noble position in ancient astronomy which it would seem to deserve.

42.
___________________
¹ Post, L.v., Waltersdorff, E.v. & Lindqvist, S., Bronsåldersmanteln från Gerumsberget i Västergötland. (Der bronzezeitliche Mantel von Gerumsberget in Västergötland.) 1924–25. Out of print.
² Latviešu tautas dziesmas, (Chansons populaires lettonnes), in 12 volumes, volumes I — XII, edited by Arveds Švābe, Kārlis Straubergs, Edīte Hauzenberga-Šturma, Copenhagen, Imanta (publishers), 1952-1956, Vol. XI, p. 375. In Latvian, Verse 33854 of the Latvian Dainas reads [with our translation next to it]:

[Daina number 33854]

Mēnesītis nakti brauca, [The Moon rides the heavens,]
Zvaigžņu deķis mugurā; [A blanket of stars on his back;]
Rīta zvaigzne, vakarāja, [The Morning Star, (and) Evening Star]
Tie Mēneša kumeliņi. [Are the steeds of the Moon.]

This electronically searchable text of the Latvian Dainas at the University of Virginia is one of the great book digitization achievements of historical literature in the modern era and we heartily congratulate all of those who made it possible, some of whom are listed here and here.

UPDATE, FEBRUARY 10, 2007

We were of two minds about our initial result for the astronomical lines on the Gerum Cloak, so that we have recalculated the entire thing by placing several layers of thresholded pictures on top of one another to give a composite photograph - which allows a more accurate placing of the lines, and give the somewhat amended results below.

The positions of the stars have not changed, but we do interpret the lines a bit differently. Theoretically, the angle between the vertical celestial meridian running between Scorpio and Orion and the dagger mark on the upper left edge of the cloak (presumably the Autumn Equinox) gives an angular separation by Starry Night Pro of about 30°, which would in fact correspond to around 300 BC, the date to which the Gerum Cloak is dated by the archaeologists.

As for the Spring Equinox (the right lower corner of the Gerum Cloak), this is a troublesome cloak region for interpretation. We previously calculated it as 24°, measured from Orion's bow viz. shield, which gave us a date of ca. 1750 BC, so that we were concerned about that date, as it did not mesh with the archaeology dating of the cloak at ca. 300 BC.

In the recalculation above we now have the alternatives of 15°, measured from Bellatrix, i.e. the right edge of Orion, which would measure to Aldebaran and the Hyades, whereas 30° would measure from Bellatrix to the Pleiades and it is about a 50° angular separation to the Spring Equinox in 300 BC. This corner of the decipherment one can best view as "unclear" and we have marked it so in the revised decipherment above. Perhaps the ancients marked Aldebaran and the Hyades and the Pleiades in that era, but we are sceptical.

What should happen now?

The first thing that must be done - based on the results of our work - is for the Gerum Cloak to be examined in Sweden by the forensics experts there to confirm or deny whether stars of the heavens are marked on that Gerum Cloak, as we allege they are.

The second thing to be done by the forensic experts in Sweden is to mark exactly the contours of the dagger incisions (i.e. the slits in the cloak made by some kind of a sharp object) and then to draw the various possible lines which can be drawn to and from these various slits (both from the back as well as the front of the slits) across the cloak to see what kinds of exact angle measurements one obtains.

Only then would one be in a position to determine exactly where the lines were originally intended to run and then one could measure the resulting angles exactly, thereby permitting a more dependable interpretation.

Even then, we have no assurance that the astronomy depicted on the cloak necessarily coincides with the era in which the cloak was made. The cloak could be a copy of an earlier cloak or some other planispheric object. (We have this problem, for example, with chronologies found on cuneiform tablets - which in part have simply been copied from much earlier predecessors - see our discussion of MUL.APIN ).

We think that our discovery of star representations on the Gerum Cloak can be reproduced and substantiated. We think it is less clear as to how the lines of astronomical orientation on the cloak may ultimately be interpreted.

Technorati Tags: Sverige, Sweden, Gerum, Gerum Cloak, archaeology, astronomy, archaeoastronomy, planisphere, sky map, Johann Bayer, Uranometria, Paint Shop Pro, forensics, PSP, photographs, photographic analysis, history, ancient history, EU Pundit

Rock Drawings in Scandinavia May Show European Astronomy Origins

2007-01-30T02:24:00.000+01:00

It was the ancient ordering of the stars of the heavens, which, according to Bertrand Russell, gave men their first conceptions of natural law.

We have been successful - so we allege - in deciphering the entire complex of Scandinavian rock drawings at the World Heritage Site of Tanum, now in Sweden, and formerly in Norway (until the year 1658 - see the Treaty of Roskilde).

Our decipherment shows that the more than 1500 petroglyphs (rock drawings) at Tanum and its rock art affiliate locations form an enormous ca. 70 square kilometer planisphere (sky map of the heavens).

The graphic presentation of the decipherment is found below:

The Decipherment of the Tanum Petroglyphs by Andis Kaulins 2007

This sky map forms a shape of the stars along the Milky Way which was probably intended by its makers to represent a heavenly boat of the ancient Nordic seafarers. We have drawn in the line of the Milky Way to show this, but it is not, as far as we know, actually drawn on the ground.

As we shall be presenting a paper on this topic in May of this year in Horn / Bad Meinberg, Germany, at the Machalett Conference on Preshistory and Early History, this posting just contains the basics of our discovery.

It was 30 years ago in the year 1977 that this author first visited the petroglyphs (rock drawings) of Tanum, located in Tanumshede, Västra Götaland (historically Bohuslän), about a two-hour drive north of Göteborg (Gothenburg). Tanum was not well known internationally in 1977, in spite of over 1500, in part gigantic, rock drawings.

Tanum includes the following petroglyphic locations covering many square kilometers of countryside: Vitlycke (where the museum is located), Tanum, Tegneby, Aspeberget, Gerum, Ryland, Oppen, Slänge, Varlös, Fossum, Lycke, Hoghem, Västerby, Ljungby, Tuvene, Litsleby, Kyrkoryk, Orrekläpp, Rungstung, Satetorp, Ryk, Tyft, Hovtorp, Björneröd, Bergslycke, Kalleby and Trättelanda.

One key to our decipherment was the Tanum rock drawing location map found at the World Heritage Site for Tanum. Without such a complete overview of the area, such a decipherment as ours would be impossible, since it is the entire complex of petroglyphs which builds the secret to this enormous site. All of these petroglyphs as a whole represent the stars of the heavens, with multiple petroglyphs in clusters representing constellations of stars known to us today. Many of these along the ecliptic of course form our modern Zodiac.

One cannot escape the feeling at Tanum that we are witnessing the birth of modern astronomy among the ancient seafarers, whose need for a knowledge of star orientation in sea navigation is beyond dispute.

These ancient men formed these constellations primarily for practical purposes and not, as mainstream archaeology persists in advocating regarding these petroglyphs, for unproven rites and rituals, which may have been a part of the complex of the ancient world, but certainly not as its moving force.

It is in fact little wonder that there are so many boats (ancient ships) represented in the petroglyphic figures. To the seafaring ancients, the night sky was a sea of stars. We think it possible that this might be the location at which our modern stellar constellations were initially "grouped" by European man - for purposes of navigation in seafaring travel.

There are other proofs - beyond the evidence of the rock drawings themselves - that this astronomical decipherment is correct, e.g. the names of locations at which the rock drawings are found, but these proofs will first be discussed in a paper in German to be presented to the 41st Conference of the Machalett Study Group on Prehistory and Early History in May of this year.

NATO Summit in Riga Latvia

2006-12-04T20:40:00.000+01:00

We subscribe to the White House Weekly Review in order to get a simple overview of the agenda of the US President's activities which is not twisted by the partisan political opinionating which invariably accompanies mainstream media accounts of those activities.

A good example is the past week's visit of President Bush to the Baltic countries, where Bush was in Estonia on November 28 and in Riga, Latvia on November 29 for the NATO Summit where Bush stated:

"One of the great responsibilities of this Alliance is to strengthen and expand the circle of freedom here in Europe. In the nearly six decades since NATO's founding, Europe has experienced an unprecedented expansion of liberty. A continent that was once divided by an ugly wall is now united in freedom. Yet the work of uniting Europe is not fully complete. Many nations that threw off the shackles of tyranny are still working to build the free institutions that are the foundation of successful democracies. NATO is encouraging these nations on the path to reform -- and as governments make hard decisions for their people, they will be welcomed into the institutions of the Euro-Atlantic community. "

As can be read at the Fact Sheet of the NATO Summit 2006, the RULE OF LAW is an important element in the expansion of liberty in Europe.

Indeed, we think that the rule of law is the most important significant difference between democratic nations and countries or regions who are suffering under tyrannical governments or who are plagued by factions who are enemies of democracy.

European Union Copyright Reform is a War of the Worlds

2006-11-29T20:19:00.000+01:00

Helena Spongenberg in her 29.11.2006 EUobserver.com article

MEPs push for new copyright law in digital era

quotes Pia Raug, spokeswoman collective rights management lobby CISAC, who says about the current situation of copyright law in the European Union, that:

"It's a war of the worlds"

on issues such as digital rights management (DRM), collective rights management, and private copy levies.

Spongenberg writes:

"Interest in copyright reform is being sparked by explosive growth in the digital music market which is set to become a €3.9 billion a year industry in the EU by 2011, but which is throwing up new challenges both for independent artists trying to exploit the new medium and the companies trying to make money from downloading songs. "

How right she is. We ourselves have uploaded our musical compositions and performances to Kaulinsium at MySpace in order to participate in this new 21st century "gold rush". Happy listening.