French business daily La Tribune reports:

José Manuel Barroso revient à la charge sur les OGM		Jose Manuel Barroso back to the attack with GMOs
Le président de la Commission européenne José Manuel Barroso veut relancer le processus d'autorisation de la culture de deux OGM controversés, ont assuré à l'AFP (Agence France Presse) plusieurs sources européennes.		The President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso wants to relaunch the approval process for growing two disputed GM crops, several European sources have told AFP (Agence France Presse) .
"L'autorisation de la culture du maïs MON 810 et de la pomme de terre Amflora est une de ses priorités", a ainsi confié une source au sein de l'exécutif bruxellois sous couvert de l'anonymat.		"The authorization of MON 810 maize and the Amflora potato is one of his priorities," a source in the Brussels executive confided, on condition of anonymity.
Le président souhaiterait ainsi résoudre très vite le dossier, dès la prise de fonction de sa nouvelle équipe la semaine prochaine. La première réunion de la nouvelle Commission est prévue le 17 février mais le programme est "encore en cours d'élaboration", a précisé la porte-parole de la Commission, Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen.		The president wishes to settle the matter quickly, as soon as his new team takes up its functions next week. The first meeting of the new Commission is scheduled for February 17 but the program is "still being worked out," said the spokesperson of the Commission, Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen.

An OECD press release today details G7 trade figures over the recession and into Q3 2009. Here comes the Big Dipper and the oof! up we go again, a nice reassuring U-shape.

(Note: this is trade in goods; services show a somewhat flatter profile).

As they note, trade remains well below the levels of mid-2008.

Below the fold, an interesting series by country covering the blue rectangle in the bottom right corner of that graph above, and from which I've cherry-picked. Says the press release:

However, the U-shaped pattern for G7 countries shows distinct differences in trends in net balances. Increasing positive trade balances for Germany and Japan contrast with increasing negative balances for France and Italy. The United States and the United Kingdom broadly maintained their negative trade balance.

The presidential palace in Port-au-Prince

AFP.com - Hundreds feared dead as 7.0 quake strikes Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) - The strongest earthquake to hit Haiti in over a century rocked the impoverished Caribbean nation Tuesday, toppling buildings and triggering fears that hundreds have been killed in widespread destruction.

Some of the country's most venerable buildings, including Haiti's presidential palace, were destroyed by the late-afternoon, 7.0-magnitude quake, and bodies were seen arrayed in the streets as darkness enveloped a panic-stricken capital Port-au-Prince.

Injured, homeless and horrified residents of the crowded capital of two million suffered through the terror of dozens of strong aftershocks, according to scattered eyewitness reports.

With a major tragedy was unfolding, communication and electricity alternated between patchy and complete cutoff, and the full magnitude of destruction quickly dawned on Haitian officials, one of whom described the quake as a "catastrophe of major proportions."

The epicentre of the quake was close to the capital, Port-au-Prince.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) said 27 strong aftershocks hit the country in the hours after the initial 2153 GMT quake.

Sara Fajardo of Catholic Relief Services told AFP that staff in the country were terrified the aftershocks would topple more buildings.

The top economics spot, at 7.25 am, on France's main public radio, France Inter, was for long held by ultra-liberal pundit Jean-Marc Sylvestre. He was replaced not long ago by a journalist at business daily Les Echos, Dominique Seux. Here's the kind of editorial you can expect to hear in France at that peak-audience moment in the morning. Seux's:

France Inter > Les chroniques > L'édito éco		France Inter > Columnists > Economics leader
seul voeu pour 2010, c'est que l'Europe se ressaisisse, qu'elle se réveille si elle ne veut pas être marginalisée comme un continent sympathique mais sur le déclin. Cette inquiétude se nourrit de l'actualité la plus récente.		only wish for 2010, is that Europe gets its act together and wakes up if it doesn't want to be marginalized like a nice, friendly continent that's in decline. This concern is fed by the most recent news.

The worrying news items are that Volvo has been taken over by Geely; that S Korea got the Abou Dhabi nuclear contract instead of the French consortium; that Europe was sidelined in Copenhagen when the US and China decided they would go ahead at the pace that suited them, ignoring Europe's climate-change "leadership". Concludes Seux: la roue tourne, et pas dans le sens européen (the wheel turns, and not in Europe's favour).

An irrelevant, marginalized, declining Europe that no one takes any notice of. Where have we heard that before? Probably from Charles Grant's "Indian official" who wouldn't have time to meet anyone from the EU unless it was the traffic-stopping Tony Blair. Or from five hundred other neoliberal concern trolls.

Seux goes on to read the tea leaves that matter:

Not much noticed in the Salon yesterday, the photographic evidence that Nicolas Sarkozy was there on the 9th November twenty years ago, heroically smashing a breach in the Wall of Shame with a hammer (no anvil).

The photo's on Sarko's Facebook wall (where else?), along with the legend of young Nicolas' 9th November 1989. Where we learn:

Update [2009-11-10 3:11:37 by afew]: This story is all over the place in France this morning. Alain Juppé, who was supposed to have been there, is evasive. Bernard Kouchner, I heard half an hour ago on France Inter, said he systematically believes the President, and pompously refused to discuss this "derisory" matter (meaning Sarko's Facebook self-glorification is derisory, Bernard?). Others step up to support Sarko's version, but it's pretty clear no one believes them.

In a recent discussion of Blair's candidacy for the post of President of the European Council, the question was asked:

Migeru:

wasn't this "Council President" Blair's idea to begin with?

Well, kind of. UK Government claims it was his idea, while other observers say it was Chirac's. In any case, it rapidly became known, in the spring of 2002, as the A-B-C proposal, after its champions Aznar-Blair-Chirac. It was bitterly opposed by the Seven Dwarfs. It also ran contrary to the European vision of the EU's largest member state.

The reasons why the proposal made it through to the Lisbon treaty, but in a watered-down form and with a lack of clear definition of the role of the presidency with regard to the rotating member-state presidency, to the Commission presidency, and to the functions of the "High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy", are already suggested by the breakdown of proposition/opposition above.

Here's how it happened.

Originally posted 1 Oct, bumped by afew

HELP is still needed and time is short!

We need: press contact details (email addresses) for German, Italian, Portuguese, Greek. Can no one help?

We need: translators. A press release is ready, in English and French. It is a brief document, won't take long to translate.

If you can help, please say so here! Thanks.

::::::::

In July many of us contributed to a diary helping to prepare for a press release relating to Stop Blair!

Press Contact List: Your Help Needed

We could do a press release in English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Swedish? Italian? Finnish? Danish? Portuguese? If you can and will translate into one of these languages or another European language, please mention it in comments. (The text of the press release itself will go up in another diary for collaborative editing).

And, even if you're not able to offer translation work, we need contact details (preferably online) for press and media in all countries we are likely to be able to cover in translation. This means checking out the Contact Us page (with reference to international affairs, European affairs, politics) on the sites of:

• national and important regional dailies
• politics and current affairs weeklies and monthlies
• radio stations handling news and current affairs
• TV channels likewise
• news and current affairs web sites

We can then organize and update a list language by language (below the fold).

If we want to move on this soon, then it would be good to have additional press contact details. There's particularly a need for German-language outlets, for Italian, and Portuguese. How about Greek too?

The current list (I hope there are no omissions) is below the fold.

So who finally went for a walk, last Friday, inside the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris?

Well, LEP, and Fran, and dvx and gk, and I was there too, and... (Memory of groups walking round over the past long weekend is unreliable due to circumstances, so if I missed anyone, just add in comments...)

Fine weather, but it's a strange and complicated place, easy to get lost in even with a map. But here are some pics that may help you if ever you go there!

The Telegraph, followed by a predictable swath of the British press, has been making noises about the UK contribution to the EU budget again:

UK's payments to EU jump by 60 per cent - Telegraph

Britain's payments to the European Union will soar by almost 60 per cent next year, according to figures "buried" in government documents.

The Treasury statistics show that the UK's net contribution to the EU will increase from £4.1 billion this year to £6.4 billion in 2010/11.

The figures were published in the Treasury's annual Community Finances statement, which was slipped out last month just before parliament broke up for its summer recess.

...

Britain's budget rebate - won by Margaret Thatcher in 1984 - is to shrink from £5.1 billion this year to £3.3 billion in 2010/11.

This was from Political Editor Patrick Hennessy, the theme was picked up in his blog by S-E England Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, and Bruno Waterfield wrote this:

EU breaks British budget pledge - Telegraph

European Union officials are preparing to ditch a promise to Britain of a complete review of all EU spending, despite sharp rises in UK payments to Brussels over the next four years.

The overhaul was promised to soften the blow of a deal to cut Britain's budget rebate, originally won by Margaret Thatcher in 1984 but partly surrendered during a negotiation by Tony Blair in December 2005.

There was an angry reaction when The Sunday Telegraph revealed last weekend that as a result, Britain's net contribution to the EU is to rise from £4.1 billion this year to an estimated £6.9 billion in 2011 - the equivalent of £257 for each household.

The much-reviled contribution rose by half a billion between Hennessy's article and Waterfield's, but let's not cavil, Bruno's no doubt a generous guy. The typo (if it is one) illustrates, though, that figures on the EU budget shift, normally because they are constantly adapted to circumstances - over or under-spending, accounting dates versus actual transfer dates, differences between commitments and final payments, exchange rates for non-Eurozone countries, etc. The exact final size of the UK rebate, for example, is only fixed four years after the accounting year in question (and don't let's forget, as I'm sure you were about to, that the financial year in the UK is 6 April to 5 April, not 1 Jan to 31 Dec as in EU accounts).

Surely there are rule-of-thumb approximations that will serve? Very roughly, yes - though, when they were drawing up the current EU Financial Perspective (a seven-year budgetary period of which the overall lines are negotiated in advance - this is the December 2005 negotiation mentioned above, in respect of the 2007-13 FP), who was predicting the financial and economic crisis and the fall of the pound against the euro, for example? (Anyone serious?)

Post here what is, in your view, the main, central reason why Tony Blair is not suited for the job of President of the European Council.

Please avoid insults and hyperbole. Please do not avoid cold, sober, thoughtful, penetrating analysis. If it suddenly happens. (Perhaps it always does, to you ;)).

In the relaunch of the Stop Blair! campaign, ThatBritGuy suggests putting out a press release.

We could do a press release in English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Swedish? Italian? Finnish? Danish? Portuguese? If you can and will translate into one of these languages or another European language, please mention it in comments. (The text of the press release itself will go up in another diary for collaborative editing).

And, even if you're not able to offer translation work, we need contact details (preferably online) for press and media in all countries we are likely to be able to cover in translation. This means checking out the Contact Us page (with reference to international affairs, European affairs, politics) on the sites of:

• national and important regional dailies
  
• politics and current affairs weeklies and monthlies
  
• radio stations handling news and current affairs
  
• TV channels likewise
  
• news and current affairs web sites

We can then organize and update a list language by language (below the fold).

Bumped for more input: Germany? Italy? Portugal? Other?

The recent spam attack on ET left us with hundreds of URLs cleaned out of disabled user accounts (and copied into notes for evidence and later reference). We began following some of them up right from the start, whenever there was any doubt about a homepage or a link in bio notes - for example, a link containing the words "get out of debt" or "no more hemorrhoids" is an easy call, but what of a "university" dot edu site, or a "social work" dot org? This ambivalence continued throughout, though we're now pretty much satisfied we've sorted the wheat (small pile) from the chaff (huge pile).

Digging into the huge pile now the rush seems to be over (touch wood) opens up an interesting picture. Yes, lots of what we traditionally consider spam: sales of goods like pills, creams, dietary supplements, sales of online goods like e-books, games, and software, sales of financial services, gambling, advice, training, health information. But it's rare you get there in one go: this is One Click Not. Between you and the goods comes a networked interface of articles, reviews, blog posts... Read and comment on the urgent social phenomenon of "masculine enhancement issues" (sic) before clicking on over to the site that will give a four-star review of a contraption you can follow a link to read more about before clicking through to the sales site. If you so have a mind. Or read a moving personal testimony before following a similar route through to the special-offer teenage-belly-fat-shrinker pills. Or whatever.

So here I'm attempting a review of today's networked spam, with reference to a few explanatory concepts, some of which may be familiar, others less so. All the citations and screen grabs in what follows are from sites linked to in user account spam and/or by following links from same, but no URLs will be given here. A little Gogolology can get you to these sites, but I'm not out to send them traffic.

NightJack case shatters web anonymity | Becky Hogge | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Richard Horton, the Lancashire police detective who for 18 months blogged as NightJack, has had his identity revealed by the Times, after a high court ruling that an injunction against naming him should not stand.

According to the Times's report of the case, the fact that Horton had disclosed information on his blog that could have been linked to live police investigations meant it was in the public interest for his identity to be revealed. It's understood that Horton has received a written warning from Lancashire constabulary on this count.

Although some have blamed the Times for exposing this information themselves by making the link between NightJack and Lancashire police, we must assume that if they found out who authored NightJack, others could have too.

What's more interesting about the case is the arguments Horton used to defend himself. Horton did not wish to be outed for fear that his frank views would lead to reprimand from his superiors in the force. This was not a compelling argument for the judge, Mr Justice Eady, who went as far as to call it "unattractive". But should he have listened harder?

Although Horton understood that his activities were likely to get him grief from upstairs, the arguments made by his lawyers suggest the blogger did not see himself, nor wished to be seen, as a whistleblower. If he had, he might have been protected from retribution by his employers under the Public Interest Disclosure Act, and the actions of the Times could have been viewed as anti-competitive - punishing Horton because he had chosen to self-publish his revelations instead of seeking the protection of a newspaper by giving it the story.

As it is, many are still left wondering what public interest the Times is really serving by outing the blogger. According to the courts, the Times has been permitted to expose Horton because the public should be concerned by police officers who act outside guidelines set by their superiors. If the guidelines are about the protection of the public, this argument would be intuitive. But because this case is in part about an expression of views, the issue is far from clear.

 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS 

I commented on Sunday 7 June that I had been prevented from voting in the European parliamentary election by an administrative barrier: in France, a separate register of non-French EU citizens is kept at the town hall for the municipal elections, distinct from the roll for the European elections. I was registered to vote for the municipal elections, but (failure on the part of the town hall clerk to inform me and process my application correctly), I was not on the European register.

Since the Maastricht Treaty founded the notion of EU citizenship and gave the right to vote in municipal and European elections, I have voted in both in France. My previous commune of residence registered me for both without further difficulty. That may be because the separation of the two registers had not yet been decreed, or that the town hall simply considered that obviously I intended to vote in both types of election, and proceeded to put me down on each register. The result was that I wasn't aware a distinction existed between the two registers, and so was very surprised (euphemism) to learn, on Sunday, that I couldn't vote.

I've since learned that another EU citizen (also British) had come up against the same barrier earlier that morning in the same polling station, and that he and his French wife were so mad about it they spent Sunday at the prefecture complaining, saw the magistrate who sits on election days, and finally, late in the afternoon, got a decision that he (the EU citizen) was in fact registered and could vote, which he did just before the polls closed. (I didn't have Sunday free for that, even if the mayor, with whom I had a stand-up argument in the polling station, had informed me of my right to seek redress before the court!)

Note: Why I previously bumped this and am now front-paging it: I would like to get as much information on electoral regulations and conditions as possible. To be clear: I think this is another case where EU communication is appalling, and one where it's quite possible that individual states have applied different rules with disqualification of voters by administrative snafu as a result. It's the opposite of a policy supposed to involve citizens in EU life. Would it be too much to imagine an ET campaign to get this situation changed? Next time round, EU-wide elections on the same day with the same clear rules for all voters?

Note 2: If you're not an EU citizen residing in another EU country than your own, don't feel left out! Any information about how voting for EU residents in your country is organized, will be gratefully received!

 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS 

The guy the French media are running after is Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of a coalition of Greens and altermondialists and others, Europe-Ecologie, that matched the score of the Parti Socialist (between 16 and 17%) in the European elections. Libération has an interview (not online [now available here]) of him toyesterday, and there are some interesting points in it with regard to discussion in tyronen's diary and ThatBritGuy's on the state of politics after the election.

Apart from the specifically French details, (once again Cohn-Bendit repeats he will not be a presidential candidate), most of the discussion concerns the place of the left and of ecology in European politics. After mentioning the "crisis of social-democracy", he is asked what the crisis consists of:

The directors of such [joint-stock] companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master's honour, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company.

-- Adam Smith, The Wealth Of Nations (1776)

It's on the basis of Adam Smith's distrust of managers that Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means, in The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932) provided their critique of the development of the modern corporation run by managers rather than proprietors with, according to them, deleterious effects.

The Modern Corporation and Private Property - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Private enterprise ... has assumed an owner of the instruments of production with complete property rights over those instruments... Whereas the organization of feudal economic life rested upon an elaborate system of binding customs, the organization under the system of private enterprise has rested upon the self interest of the property owner - a self interest held in check only by competition and the conditions of supply and demand... Such self interest has long been regarded as the best guarantee of economic efficiency. It has been assumed that, if the individual is protected in the right both to use his own property as he sees fit and to receive the full fruits of its use, his desire for personal gain, for profits, can be relied upon as an effective incentive to his efficient use of any industrial property he may possess.

Shareholder capitalism, argued Berle and Means from this classical perspective, destroys efficiency because shareholders delegate responsibility to managers, who do not share the motives of the property owner, posing a problem both of diligence in the protection of the interests of "those who have ventured their wealth" and of distribution of the returns. In other words, managers, after taking power in the concentrated remains of nineteenth-century family firms, deviate the Invisible Hand from its normal utilitarian workings.

Last December I asked for help with a talk on the financial crisis I was to give (and then reported how it went). This time I want help again, for another meeting of the same local society, though this time the opening address will be given by PES MEP Michel Teychenné (Website (French)). The topic is The Functioning of European Institutions.

My aim is just to participate in the discussion, but if I can speak to Michel Teychenné afterwards I'll try to get him to contribute here or agree to an interview for ET on the upcoming European Parliament elections.

I'd be grateful for pointers to good resources on EU Institutions. I know the subject has been discussed here quite a lot, and I've looked out some past ET work around institutions and especially the EP:

The European Parliamentary Elections 2009 by Sven Triloqvist

A short tour of the European Institutions by Jerome a Paris

How the EU works by Sven Triloqvist

After Lisbon, using EP election to strenghten EP power by A swedish kind of death

Europe Direct by Laurent GUERBY (contains a comment by Migeru linking to this diagram of the Codecision process.)

This is far from being a full list, and I'm certain I've missed out on a heap of stuff (by Migeru particularly). It would be good if we could centralise links here on the subject of EU institutions and their working.

Also: what would you want to ask/tell a MEP about the EP's powers and its interaction with Council and Commission?

Update [2009-3-6 5:9:6 by afew]: The meeting was held last night. Not a huge turnout (icy blasts and sleet kept people at home, or was it the subject of European Institutions that failed to motivate them? ;)). But a very interesting exchange with a MEP hard at work on parliamentary business and filled with pro-European conviction (though he voted Non to the constitutional treaty in the 2005 French referendum...).

The main subject of discussion was probably the progress of Parliament towards more influence in the codecision process with Council (influence which would ncrease with Lisbon, which Michel Teychenné supports). There was also inevitably talk of the EU's poor communications, and lack of visibility (not only caused by poor communications per se, but also by national pols obfuscating the role of the EU in decision-taking and distribution of funds).

I've yet to work out the details with him, but Michel Teychenné has agreed to put in a contribution to our coverage of the European elections here, probably in the form of an e-interview. As soon as I get confirmation, I'll post re the questions we want to ask him.

Later this week, I'll be addressing a local town-hall-type meeting on the subject of the financial crisis. I'm being asked to provide an explanation of the crisis, giving information and context as an introduction to a (non-contradictory) debate.

The meeting is organized by an association not a thousand miles removed from the Parti Socialiste, and the audience will be mostly made up of PS/Green/PC members and sympathisers BUT their sources of information may be fairly supposed to be principally the mainstream media. I'm taking it that regular access to Internet sites, blogs, etc, will only concern a small minority, and practically no one among them accesses English-language sources. The main focus of the debate will be local: what consequences for employment, local public finances, what policy intitatives should be furthered, etc.

So now here's the help I'm looking for:

1. What, in your experience, has been the best (clearest, most explanatory) source/reading available on Internet on the topic of the crisis? (It doesn't matter if you expect I'll have read it myself, it will be interesting to see what ETers vote for).
2. If you were giving an introduction to the crisis (looking to be as concrete as possible, to be able to explain (briefly) as clear a logic as possible leading to clear consequences):
• What would you choose as your starting point? (end of the real estate boom, "Bubbles" Greenspan's froth distributions, Thatcher/Reagan's accession to power, end of Bretton Woods, 1929,  the South Sea Bubble, etc?)
• How would you explain subprime mortgages and their packaging?
• HWYE (how would you explain) CDOs?
• HWYE the functioning of derivatives markets (such as in the aforementioned products)? Who buys, when, where, why, with what objectives over what term? (Why did European banks get caught arm-deep in there?)
• HWYE the shadow banking system? What hedge funds do?
• HWYE the colossal over-leveraging of the system, and how would you relate it to central bank money creation?
3. How would you show the relationship of the growth of the financial sector with the preponderance of neoliberal (or neoclassical, supply-side, market-fundie, whatever you want to call it) economics?
4. What would you say was the best policy to move forward out of the crisis and palliate its effects on the poor and those of moderate-to-middling income, and how would you relate that to the local, the on-the-ground?

Of course, these are just some questions that occur to me, and you may see that there are others that I've neglected: go ahead and post about them.

I shall of course bill my introduction as a collaborative ET effort. Thanks in advance!

UPDATE below the fold

This Michael Hudson article from last week has already been excerpted here (hat-tip to ARGeezer). This bit stood out for me (my bold):

Michael Hudson: Bankers Shake Down Congress and the G-20

The past eight years have demonstrated the folly of imagining that the stock market and real estate can provide steady rates of return that compound into exponential increases in savings sufficient to pay retirement income and make homeowners and small investors rich without really having to work. Money managers advertise "Let your money work for you," but only people actually work. Financial returns are paid in the form of command over labor power - workers "doing time."

Which is why there's a heavy sentence hanging over workers in the years to come. But what is work?

(Or any other questions that seem worth discussing arising out of this quote..!)

What's been happening with the EU and biofuels? Fran tipped us off in the Salon with an article from EUObserver, that the Commission was about to spring on us a new definition of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the production of biofuels from food crops.

EUobserver

The commission has now submitted to diplomats updated figures from the Joint Research Centre, the automotive manufacturers' association for research and development in Europe (EUCAR) and the oil companies' European association of environment, health and safety in refining (CONCAWE).

These new figures are to be used in the renewable energy directive currently in the pipeline. And there are a number of things to be said about this.