The latest to be busted is the Spanish MEP Pablo Zalban, who seems intent on bringing down the reputation of the European Parliament and his EPP party in the process.
In a comment revealing of his integrity, he told El Mundo yesterday that he met with the journalists posing as lobbyists “because I am well mannered” and also because the undercover journalist “was very good looking”.
After three meetings, Zalban actually put forward one amendment, out of two, that the undercover journalists suggested.
“One of these I rejected, but the second, after consulting with the assistants from the EPP, we thought it would enrich and improve the report because it protects small investors and goes in the same direction of consumer associations, and for this I incorporated it”, he said.
Filed Under U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday the United States would not now get involved in Syria in the same way as it has in Libya, telling CBS’s “Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer” program in an interview broadcast on Sunday that each case is unique.
Speaking on the same program in an interview that was also taped on Saturday, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the United States had seen signs that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s forces were retreating to the west because of U.S. air strikes on his armor, logistics and supply chain. Lieberman disagrees On the other hand US Sen. Joe Lieberman suggested Sunday he would support military intervention in Syria if its president resorts to the kind of violent tactics used by Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi.
Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told “Fox News Sunday” that if Assad starts slaughtering his own people, he will risk other countries imposing a no-fly zone “just as we’re doing in Libya.” He urged Assad to, instead, negotiate with the “freedom fighters” in his country.
There’s a precedent now that the world community has set in Libya, and it’s the right one,” Lieberman said. Reuters, Fox
No, we're not joking. Austrian MEP Ernst Strasser who was secretly filmed boasting to journalists, “Of course I’m a lobbyist, yes” will be succeeded by a two-times former MEP who runs his own lobbying firm.
Who better to replace an MEP disgraced for agreeing to amend EU laws on the promise of €100,000?
Strasser, who resigned after the Sunday Times released videos of him agreeing to propose amendments to EU laws for a €100,000 consultancy salary, is being replaced by Hubert Pirker, who himself worked as a professional lobbyist since leaving the European Parliament in 2009. He was an MEP from 1996-2004 and from 2006-2009.
The website of Pirker’s former consultancy firm “EU-Triconsult” has been removed from the internet, but under the firm’s services he offered prospective clients “my networks and my negotiation and lobbying experience with European and international institutions at your disposal.”
Meanwhile, the Romanian MEP implicated in the Sunday Times ‘cash-for-laws’ sting, former Foreign Minister Adrian Severin, has been expelled from the Socialist group in the European Parliament but has refused to resign from his post as an MEP. The third MEP involved in the scandal, former Slovenian Foreign Minister Zoran Thaler has resigned.
We asked yesterday whether the EP is reformable. This is not a good start.
But the Sunday Times' investigation published yesterday, now dubbed the 'cash-for-laws' scandal, leaves three MEPs standing accused of outright corruption. The article is behind the paywall, and well worth reading in full if you get the chance, but here are the key details:
- Three MEPs, Adrian Severin, the 56-year-old former Romanian deputy prime minister, Zoran Thaler, the former Slovenian foreign minister, and Ernst Strasser, a former interior minister in Austria, were all caught agreeing to propose amendments to EU laws believing they would be paid for this work with a €100,000 (£87,300) annual salary, a consultancy fee or both.
- The meetings with undercover journalists were secretly filmed and took place in bars, restaurants and the parliament’s two buildings in Brussels and Strasbourg. Severin later emailed the reporters saying: “Just to let you know that the amendment desired by you has been tabled in due time." Then sent an invoice for €12,000 for “consulting services concerning the codification of the Directive 94/19/EC, Directive 2009/14/EC and the amendments thereto”.
- The amendments were intended to dilute directives supposed to protect customers’ deposits after scandals such as the collapse of the Icelandic banks.
The sting has already claimed the heads of two of the MEPs, with Austrian MEP Strasser resigning immediately but claiming this was to avoid "damage" to his Austrian People's Party rather than because he'd done anything wrong.
Severin and Thaler, said that they knew it was a set-up and merely wanted to see where the exchange of emails would lead and initially refused to resign but, according to the latestreports, Thaler has now also done so. Severin has quit his job as deputy chairman of the Romanian Social Democracy Party, but so far held onto his seat at the European Parliament. The Group of European Socialists in the EP has however ordered him to Brussels to explain himself.
As the Sunday Times argued in its leader, this comes at a time when:
"The European parliament and its 736 members matter more now than at any time in its 53-year history. We live in an era when much of British law and a high proportion of the regulations that control our lives are determined in Europe. MEPs have the power to amend those laws and directives in a way that affects everybody."
The EP is launching its own investigation but, if they're found guilty and perhaps even if not, this particular story is shocking enough to engrain the 'gravy train' image of MEPs in the public's mind's eye for good. Various attempts to 'reform' the EP (back in 2009 there were some harmonisation of rules on pay and a ban on hiring family members as staff) have clearly done nothing to stop the rot.
One can't help thinking that the real root of the corruption and general money-grabbing behaviour of many MEPs is the fact that the EP still thinks that it can behave like a banana republic assembly without anyone noticing.
Perhaps MEPs should forgive people for taking the view that the EP, at the end, is not a 'real' Parliament. This was the conclusion of the German Constitutional Court, which said in its ruling on the Lisbon Treaty that:
"Measured against requirements placed on democracy in states, its election does not take due account of equality, and it is not competent to take authoritative decisions on political direction in the context of the supranational balancing of interests between the states. It therefore cannot support a parliamentary government and organise itself with regard to party politics in the system of government and opposition in such a way that a decision on political direction taken by the European electorate could have a politically decisive effect. Due to this structural democratic deficit, which cannot be resolved in an association of sovereign national states (Staatenverbund), further steps of integration that go beyond the status quo may undermine neither the States’ political power of action nor the principle of conferral."
Unfortunately, with the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty in particular, the EP now has extensive powers over laws that impact on people's everyday lives.
Scandals such as these will prompt more people to suggest that it's time to move on from the argument about getting rid of just one of the EP's extra seats in Strasbourg and consider scrapping the entire thing...
This is a post I hoped I would never write. As you, my readers, know, I practice the virtue of chardi kala, translated in many different ways, but all having the meaning of eternal optimism and never giving up. I am still practicing, but it is hard.
No doubt by now you have heard about the massive oil spill by British Petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico in the Caribbean Sea, truly a paradise on earth. Or at least it was until 20 April 2010. On that day the Deepwater Horizon oil rig - owned and run by British Petroleum - exploded, caught fire and began gushing massive amounts of crude oil into the pristine waters around it. Eleven were killed and 17 injured. That was tragic, but it is just the beginning.
The amount of oil gushing into the Gulf is estimated at somewhere between 1,475,000 and 4,200,000 gallons per day ( 5,583,432 and 15,828,729 liters/day). No one knows how much oil is in this well, how long it can keep gushing. Years or decades, if it is not somehow stopped. So far nothing has worked. In fact, efforts have actually made it worse.
Here's a nice little widget to help you calculate.
Those are pretty dry figures for most people, so here's a more graphic look. This is what the spill looks like right now (30 June 2010):
I realise that most of my readers really can't relate to southern Louisiana, so here is the spill in other locations where I have readers:
If I happened to miss your locale, go to Ifitwasmyhome to move the spill to wherever you live.
Perhaps you'd like to see it as it happens.
If that's not enough to bring it home to you, here are a few oil-soaked pelicans. I find this horribly painful to look at.
In addition, massive amounts of methane gas has been released into the water. This may well turn out to be even more dangerous than the oil. The methane depletes the water of oxygen, leaving all the sea life devoid of the element that is necessary to all life on earth. It is feared that the methane will cause a dead zone where nothing can live, possibly for decades. Also, scientists believe that a huge methane bubble is forming under the water. When it bursts, it could release a tsunami of 20-60 ft (6.1-18.3 m), certainly enough to engulf most of the Caribbean islands. For more information on the gas leak, go here: Gas Leak 3000 Times Worse Than Oil.
And, by the way, with our current technology we have no way to cap or contain the methane.
I guess that's not enough bad news. It is now hurricane season. (For those of you in Asia, those are typhoons.) There will be hurricanes. In fact, the first one is blowing right now. Hurricane Alex did not move close to the spill, but there will be another hurricane and another and another.
The next thing to consider is the ocean currents. The Gulf Stream is an ocean river that runs from the Caribbean to Europe.
Eventually this oil and methane and all their problems will reach Europe. They will also travel up the Atlantic coast of North America all the way to Canada and all points north. No one knows how much of the ocean will die. Certainly a large part of the Caribbean Sea will and it will take decades to recover. In the meantime the many people who make their livings along the Gulf, either fishing or in the tourist trade, have lost their means of livelihood. It is even possible that the land they live on will become uninhabitable. Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana has been alerted that a mass evacuation may become necessary, if a hurricane again hits the state. It is likely that once gone, the people will not be allowed to return due to the toxic oil and gas along the coast.
The earth is one big ecosystem, based primarily on our oceans. If a large part of one ocean dies, that will have a cascade effect on the rest of the planet. How far could this go? Worst case scenario: Bye-bye. "Not with a bang, but a whimper." If you don't recognise those lines, they are the conclusion of T. S Eliot's poem, The Hollow Men. To hear the whimper go to PowerWithout Petroleum and listen hard at 0:25.
Best case scenario: the southern coast of the United States becomes uninhabitable for a period of time and much of the sea life in the Gulf of Mexico dies, with devastating consequences to the people who now live there. As it is impossible that there be no hurricanes in the season, we can be sure that the winds will carry the oil throughout the region, damaging all it touches. That damage cannot be estimated at this time, except to say it will be extensive.
This morning (1 July 2010), going through my inbox, I found this article in the daily UN bulletin:
Methane at 100,000 times normal levels have been creating oxygen-depleted areas devoid of life near BP's Deepwater Horizon spill, according to two independent scientists
As long as I can remember, the scientists have been screaming "Wolf!" alerting us to this or that which they claim is going to wipe us out.
As I child I grew up with "nuclear annihilation."
That was the biggie. There have been others: the hole in the ozone layer, swine flu (twice), bird flu, global climate change and I'm sure others that I have forgotten. And it seems, life causes cancer. There is truth in all these scientific assertions, but there was also something we could do to stop or at least alleviate the disaster. As I see it, this is different because we are helpless to do anything except pray. Of course, I am not a scientist, and the only way I see out of this is divine intervention. Even if the spill can somehow be stopped, we can do nothing about the methane. This is the time more than ever before that we need to dig deep within ourselves and find the high spirits, the chardi kala, that is a part of us. It takes courage to look tragedy in the face and carry on without panic or depression.
And what caused all this? Of course it was British Petroleum cutting corners on safety to save money and increase profit. It was Pres. Clinton who authorised the deep sea drilling. It was Pres. George W. Bush who so favoured the oil interests and permitted a lack of oversight to allow BP not to follow the safety measures. It was Pres. Obama who did not immediately step in to correct this corruption from the previous administration. But it was also all of us who are dependent on petroleum, who refuse to cut back on our usage, we who demand more and more. In the end, if we had not demanded this oil, if we had lost our lust it, BP wouldn't have been able to make the profit that drove them to build this rickety structure upon the rickety structure of our economy. So what now? We have learned why greed is such an evil thing. Whither our good, green beautiful earth?
I keep thinking about the ending of Dr. Strangelove. (A great movie. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you see it while you still can.)
Remain in chardi kala, my dear brothers and sisters!
The European Police College, designed to train EU member states' police officers, has had its fair share of controversy in recent years. In February, MEPs on the European Parliament's Budgetary Committee refused to sign off its accounts amid a scandal over the "private use of public funds". Apparently, almost £21,000 in EU funds was wrongly paid out for staff use of cars, transport services, mobile phones and furniture.
So who better to put in charge of such an institution than a man under suspicion for corruption himself. We wish we were joking but today's Belgian daily De Morgen reports that the Belgian police officer who will preside over the executive board of the European Policy Academy (CEPOL) during the Belgian EU Presidency in 2010 is currently a corruption suspect.
The Sunday Times’ expose has certainly shaken the bees nest at the European Parliament. So far four MEPs have been caught out, on video, agreeing to table amendments to EU directives in return for the promise of cash. However, despite being caught well and truly with their hands in the till, two MEPs are still professing their innocence to the charges and refuse to step down.
