I'm old enough to have voted in the first ever UK-wide referendum in 1975. I was one of the 67% who responded positively to the question “Do you think the UK should stay in the European Community (Common Market)?” Times have changed and that very healthy 2/3 majority is unlikely to be repeated!
Democracy in ancient Greece was made up of only around 500 people (to be precise, of 500 male aristocrats). Aristoteles argued that a bigger group of people would not be as effective. Since then Europe has grown and the size of the group that is united by European democracy is over 400 million people.
We are a long way from recovery and not far from the European elections. Will the voters want to demand a different set of solutions? A Green and sustainable economic model?
Blog: Two of my close friends have recently lost their jobs. They are only two examples of what is happening, not just in Catalonia, but across Spain - and most certainly in Portugal and Greece. People are being kicked out of their jobs, deprived of a dignified way of earning their living, and in the end, of freely living their lives. Spain is in the middle of a crisis because the current government has failed to act on three key issues
All across Europe, unemployment is about about 11.8% . When I saw that figure, I actually thought, for a recession, that is not so terribly bad. I have seen it before and country's recover. Across Europe, about 23 million people are unemployed. Divide that by the 27 member countries and we all have about one million unemployed. Oh, if that were only the truth. If only misery was mathematically allotted.
The suicide of Aaron Swartz, 26, on Friday was something that caught me completely off guard. He was someone who was in the periphery of my awareness. He was an American facing a 35 year jail sentence for distributing academic information in bulk digital form. His accusers liked to refer to him as a hacker breaking into databases - the vague threat of danger that taints any digital rights action that runs contrary to government demands and is the equivalent of calling every criminal a terrorist. Both words are loaded with immediate prejudice.
We want your photos, we want to show what you as Greens do all over Europe, and share it with our followers. Don’t worry about quality, lighting, aperture, filters, .RAW or .JPG. Just send us your Green photos, campaign images, or something that you captured with your phone on your way home from work.
There are laws for road traffic. There is an opportunity to do something to ease, if not stop, this situation. But, in all my years on the road, I have never seen a police officer indicate a reprimand to a car parked in a bike lane. Never seen a car stopped who has just almost knocked down a cyclist with their irresponsible behavior.
Unlike the American leadership that seems, for now, to have cast aside their greenwash policies in favor or recovering the US economy as the first and foremost goal (read: at almost any cost), the Greens have called on Europe to pick up the mantle that has been so easily put down.
There is a fundamental gap in public understanding of information technology and potential. And the gap extends into legislation and legislative needs. There was no shortage of speakers demonstrating the contradiction of Europe, the European Union, so quick to advocate human rights and civil liberties while doing little to nothing to prevent the sale of technology that allows regimes to track online critics, violating liberties, often in the most violent forms.
