Robert Montgomery plays Philip Marlowe in the 1947 film version of "The lady in the lake"

Taking a break from thinking about the future of the eurozone or the prospects for a UN Parliamentary Assembly, I took a trip to 1940s California in the company of Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s iconic, hardbitten private detective.  But amidst the glitz of Hollywood and the grime of Bay City, I found the same worries about public life and public behaviour as inhabit the rest of this website.

Here is police captain Webber, in “The lady in the lake”, explaining to Marlowe after two police officers have assaulted our hero while in the course of looking after a client:

“Police business,” he said almost gently, “is a hell of a problem.  It’s a good deal like politics.  It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men.  So we have to work with what we get – and we get things like this.”

Somewhere in a society, there will be power, and power can be misused.  In a democracy, we place most of that power in the hands of people we have chosen to hold it, but that power can still be misused.  So we need other constraints on the way in which power is used, outside of those imposed by elections.

The future of the eurozone will only be secured if the power of politicians to run up debts is controlled, given that the countries in the eurozone no longer have the power to print money to pay their bills instead.  World peace can only be secured if national governments are constrained in their ability to cause environmental or economic harm to other countries, or indeed their own citizens.  Captain Webber of the Bay City Police Department does not trust politicians limitlessly, and neither should you.

Outside and Inside - Norway’s agreements with the European Union (published by Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Some British Eurosceptics continually refer to the Norwegian model of being outside the EU but able to trade with it.  As it happens, the Norwegian government has just published a comprehensive review of its relationship with the European Union (“Outside and Inside – Norway’s agreements with the European Union”, http://www.regjeringen.no/pages/36798821/PDFS/NOU201220120002000EN_PDFS.pdf)

Of particular note is the following section (starting on page 7):

The most problematic aspect of Norway’s form of association with the EU is the fact that Norway is in practice bound to adopt EU policies and rules in a broad range of issues without being a member and without voting rights. This raises democratic problems. Norway is not represented in decision-making processes that have direct consequences for Norway, and neither do we have any significant influence on them. Moreover, our form of association with the EU dampens political engagement and debate in Norway and makes it difficult to monitor the Government and hold it accountable in its European policy.

This is not surprising; the democratic deficit is a well-known aspect of the EEA Agreement that has been there from the start. It is the price Norway pays for enjoying the benefits of European integration without being a member of the organisation that is driving these developments. Although the democratic problems are as great today as they were 20 years ago – and have in fact increased – this is a situation that the broad political majority has been willing to accept and that many have become accustomed to.

I was pushing my daughter in her buggy one morning, from the park where we had been playing to the shops to get us some things for lunch, and as we came round a corner¸ from a side road onto the main road, crashing in to us was a cyclist.  He shouldn’t have been on the pavement, of course, and he must have braked hard as soon as he saw us but he still couldn’t avoid hitting us.  He was only going very slowly at the moment of the actual collision, so no-one was hurt, but it was still an accident.

I shouted at him, naturally.  I rarely lose my temper but that was one occasion when I did.  Sorry, he said, it’s all my fault, I accept that, but the road is dangerous and it’s safer to ride on the pavement instead.

But it’s not safer.  It might be safer for him if he rides his bike on the pavement, but he makes it less safe for other people, in this case a two year old in a buggy.  And the public reaction to the behaviour of the captain of the cruise ship that sank, apparently fleeing the vessel before making sure that all his passengers were safe, tells us all we need to know about adult men protecting themselves at the expense of small children.

This problem of selfishness is not confined to the cyclists of north west London.  From banks to tax havens, there are countless examples of people pursuing their own self-interest at the wider (and greater) expense of others.  Adam Smith’s famous invisible hand supposes that the collective interest is served by the pursuit of individual self-interest, and often it is.  But sometimes it isn’t, sometimes those self-interests undermine the collective interest, and those are the occasions when we need the law.

Mitt Romney, Republican front runner, fortunately (picture Jessica Rinaldi / Mitt Romney Media)

The presidential primaries are finally underway in the United States, with candidates competing for the right to be the Republican challenger to Barack Obama in November.  (Obama is unopposed as the Democrat nominee.)

Although Federal Union is a British organisation, it is firmly of the view that events in other countries are not necessarily foreign, and of nothing is this more true that the election of the American president.  The US is the world’s largest military power and its largest single national economy, which means that whatever the Americans do has a great impact on the rest of the world, too.

Four years ago, this blog was unfashionably sceptical of Barack Obama himself (read an analysis here), but possibly a wise judgement as it has turned out.  But what to make now of the Republican candidates traipsing through Iowa and New Hampshire and on to South Carolina and beyond?

The front runner is Mitt Romney, whose proposed foreign policy is predictably the most similar to that of the incumbent.  (American policy shows a remarkable degree of continuity regardless of the election result.)  He criticises Barack Obama’s plans to reduce the size of the American armed forces, proposing a minimum expenditure of 4 per cent of GDP, but such suggestions are easy to make in isolation from a discussion about what taxes might be raised or other expenditure cut in order to afford it.  He wants to be tougher with rivals such as Russia and China and tougher still with threats such as Iran and North Korea, but these are changes of emphasis rather than direction compared with the current administration.  And we must remember he is competing at present for the support of Republican voters: he has to tickle their prejudices rather than confront them with facts.  Why else would his view “that the unilateral attempt to decide issues that are designated for final negotiations is unacceptable” is one to be directed “to the Palestinians” alone?

Newt Gingrich is more definite about the challenges facing America.  For him, the US is “engaged in a long war against radical Islamism”.  He claims that, in the case of Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, “Only a grand strategy for marginalizing, isolating, and defeating radical Islamists across the world will lead to victory.”  However, he also warns that “Military force must be used judiciously and with clear, obtainable objectives understood by Congress.”  Which is to say that George W Bush was simultaneously too soft and too tough.

Rick Santorum takes the Gingrich view, only more so.  His toughness on Iran amounts to outright war straightaway, sub-contracting decisions about that war to an ally: “Stand with Israel as an ally and in any efforts Israel may take to defend themselves from Iranian aggression”.  Never mind what Congress thinks, the Knesset should decide.  He is surely correct to say that American foreign policy should reflect American values, but his interpretation of American values is theocratic as must as it is democratic.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Ron Paul, a libertarian Congressman from Texas, who wants less war-fighting and not more.  How can the US “Only send our military into conflict with a clear mission” if the enemy is Newt Gingrich’s radical Islamism?  The Republicans are offered a clear choice.  But there is a danger that America might withdraw too much: “We should only fight when it’s in our national security interest, and we should no longer do the corrupt United Nation’s bidding by policing the world.”  If America is, as Ronald Reagan said, the world’s “abiding alternative to tyranny” (quoted by Newt Gingrich), then some kind of policing role is essential.

If all this ideology is not to your taste, then there is Jon Huntsman.  He is a former ambassador – he resigned as ambassador to China in order to run for president – and knows something of the world outside American.  He even has a map on his website!  He is the only one to have anything to say about the European sovereign debt crisis which, if it is not resolved, has the potential to throw off course anything the US might try to do with its own economic revival.  But he is currently polling below satirical comedian Stephen Colbert, so his brand of experience is unlikely to be put up against Barack Obama when the November election comes round.

From a British perspective, Mitt Romney offers the least change compared with the policies of President Obama.  Messrs Gingrich and Santorum would change things in one direction, Ron Paul would change them in the other.  Whatever frustrations we might feel at Obama’s failure to live up to his initial promise, we should cross our fingers that Gingrich, Santorum and Paul are never given the opportunity to live up to theirs.

Colonel Gaddafi (picture Antônio Milena/Agência Brasil)

By John Parry

Civil wars can be the most vicious form of conflict as recent events in Libya have demonstrated. The Benghazi-based rebels’ swift victory, achieved with Nato air support, resulted in the capture and assassination of Colonel Gaddafi while also destroying much of the country’s vital infrastructure particularly in the north-west region of Tripolitania and although services such as electricity, food supplies and medical care can be restored and housing rebuilt, agreeing new social, administrative and political structures will be a much bigger problem.

The National Transitional Council promised ‘to supervise the election of a founding assembly charged with developing a new constitution…..(based on) ‘respect for human rights, guarantee of civil liberties, separation of powers, an independent judiciary and the establishment of national institutions that provide for broad and pluralistic participation, peaceful transition of authority and the right of representation for every segment of society.’ This draft constitution is then to be ‘submitted to public referendum’. It is too early, particularly for outside observers, to predict whether the resulting proposals will lead to a unitary state or, alternatively, to a looser federation based perhaps on the country’s traditional three main regions—Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan–but a brief glance into the past might provide a useful background.

In land area Libya is one of the largest African states but much of it is desert and it therefore has a comparatively small population, the majority living in the fertile northen strip bordering the Mediterranean. It was here, in earlier ages, that trans-Saharan trade in gold, precious stones and other products led to the foundation of Mediterranean trading posts such as the Greek city of Berenice (Benghazi) and the three Roman cities of Lepcis, Oea  and Sabratha from which modern Tripoli (Tripolis) takes its name. It was in fact Greek traders who first used the name Libya though at the time it referred only to the Benghazi area (Cyrenaica) plus the nearby desert.

Historically Libya’s development took place without, or in spite of, any European contact. In the 7th century—that is, during Europe’s ‘dark ages’—came the arrival of Islam and the Arabs who spread  across the Mahgreb [itself an Arabic word meaning ‘west’], settling and eventually making many converts among the local Berbers and others. This Arab/Islamic migration also brought education with it, leading to wider literacy and an impressive level of scholarship. By the 12th century their medical knowledge was so far in advance of anything achieved in Europe that Constantius Africanus added the teaching of Arab medicine to the Salerno medical school’s syllabus [i]. North African Arabs were also keen travellers and wrote learned accounts of the lands they visited. Ibn Battuta, one of the most famous of these scholars, was of Berber stock [ii]

But history is never static. In 1510 Spain occupied Tripoli, prompting the Ottoman Turks to intervene [iii].  Politically it was but one more incident in the ongoing conflict between the Islamic and Christian worlds but it led to Libya’s incorporation into the Ottoman Empire. Meanwhile trans-Saharan trade also continued. From Kufra in the south to Benghazi and Tripoli in the north caravans arrived with gold, guns, leather, ostrich feathers and even slaves for the Turkish market. These caravans had to pay ‘tributes’ (taxes) as they passed through each tribe’s territories–a taxation system which, when extended to ships at sea by the so-called Barbary (Berber) pirates, led to the newly-formed USA’s first foreign war: against Tripoli! [iv]

By the 19th century, with the industrial revolution in Europe creating a need for new markets and new sources of raw materials, European ships were already visiting other parts of Africa and Asia. What started as trade soon developed into the illusion that every self-respecting European country needed an overseas empire if only to gain international status. For Britain, France, the Netherlands, and eventually Germany and Italy this became the age of colonialism. In 1869 the Suez Canal opened to traffic, offering a direct trade route to East Africa, India and the orient. This focussed the attention particularly of Britain and France on the need for stability in the Mediterranean which the slowly crumbling Ottoman Empire could no longer secure. When therefore the main European powers met at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 to agree each European country’s “sphere of influence” in Africa—in effect to carve up Africa between themselves–the southern Mediterranean coast, though not on the agenda, was certainly on their minds.

Britain, which already held Gibraltar and Malta, had bought the Suez Canal from the French in 1875 and was now negotiating to occupy Cyprus while France took over Tunisia as a protectorate in 1879. Privately they both let it be known that they would raise no objection to Italy taking possession of Tripolitania. The European powers were in effect establishing the political borders which remained largely unchanged throughout the colonial period and are identical (with very few adjustments) to those of the independent African states today.

In due course the Italians began to prepare their invasion of Libya by establishing a few ‘facts on the ground’ such as buying land and promoting local economic enterprises, some sponsored by the Banco di Roma, yet when they finally launched their large-scale military invasion in 1911 they met with resistance not only from the Turkish ‘occupiers’ but also from the powerful Sanussi order of Cyrenaica. The Turks had long accepted that the Sanussi tribesmen of Cyrenaica ‘formed a religiously and culturally homogeneous community’ and had therefore administered them separately.  This continued under the Italians though it did not prevent them bringing in settlers to help develop agriculture and opening schools with the aim of promoting the use of the Italian language in their new province.

Yet despite the success of Italy’s economic infiltration and eventual take-over of Libya, officially absorbing the province into the Italian state, these new colonial masters did not succeed in winning over the Libyan people whose primary loyalty remained foccussed on their own tribes and the wider Muslim community. Nor did the concept of a modern state with established borders seem realistic in the desert where inter-tribal confederations, unacknowledged by the colonial authorities, traversed the Franco-Italian divide without even noticing it was there. As for the claim that a town, village or oasis could ‘belong’ exclusively to one or other side of the divide—well, maybe, but only in the minds of French and Italian colonial officials [v].

At the same time opposition to the Italian occupation was increasing. Operating in small groups with each tribe forming its own guerrilla band [vi] they were able to launch numerous small-scale surprise attacks against the enemy while avoiding full-scale battles. The Sanussi, always ready to defend themselves against intrusion, were among the most active. Led by the legendary ‘Umar al-Muktar their attacks were so effective that the Italian commander, General Graziani, herded some 80,000 of Cyrenaica’s civilian population into concentration camps at Sirte and cut off their food supplies from Egypt by ordering the construction of a 300km barbed wire fence.

Italy’s Fascist government’s aim was to ‘build a great nation worthy of being the heir of ancient Rome’ by launching a program of colonisation with cash subsidies for would-be immigrants  who, by the outbreak of World War II in 1939, already made up 12 per cent of Libya’s total population. Then, with the fall of France in 1940, the battle between fascism and the democracies spread to North Africa where, after bitter fighting, the Italian and German forces were defeated and a British military government was installed in Libya.

But what was to be Libya’s future? It was one of the world’s poorest countries. Its limited exports relied in part on salvaging scrap metal from the battlefields. At a meeting of the newly established United Nations Organisation the British and Italian foreign ministers suggested a joint trusteeship for the whole area with Britain taking responsibility for Cyrenaica, Italy for Tripolotania, and France for Fezzan. This was defeated in the General Assembly but in its place a resolution for the independence of a united Libya was adopted in November 1949. A United Nations commissioner was appointed to help the Libyan advisory council to draw up their new constitution. It was not an easy task. The population was mostly uneducated. Tribal sheikhs and other local leaders were not comfortable with the idea of universal suffrage, fearing it would undermine their authority, and the two smaller regions were worried that Tripolitania with its much larger population might become too powerful.

A compromise produced a two-chamber legislature with an Assembly consisting of one deputy for every 20,000 males plus an unelected Senate and a King with powers closer to those of a medieval overlord than of a constitutional monarch. Independence followed in December 1951 with the aged Idris al Sanussi as its King though relying financially and for security on Britain and the United States, both countries having military air bases in Libya.

But a new spirit was abroad in the world during those postwar years. The founding of the United Nations Organisation with its emphasis on human rights and democracy was of course its first manifestation. But this new spirit also led to the break-up of old empires, the independence of  Indonesia, India and Pakistan among others. It reached Egypt with the abolition of the monarchy and Colonel Nasser’s nationalisation of the British-owned Suez Canal in 1956, a move later to be much admired by a group of trainee army officers in Libya who resented what they saw as their own country’s subordination to Britain and America.

Already in 1959, Libya’s economy had begun slowly to improve with the discovery of oil in the Sirte basin. More schools were opened though the shortage of teachers meant that many had to be recruited from among Palestinian refugees and from Egypt. Their classes were crowded and the consequent rise in literacy raised Libyan awareness of events elsewhere in the Arab world [vii].

King Idris now began to introduce his own constitutional reforms, dividing the provinces into smaller political units, centralising power in his own hands, and effectively demolishing the country’s federal structure. In the eyes of that group of young army officers, among whom was Muammar al-Gaddafi—himself born into a Bedouin family and a true son of the desert– it was time to modernise the Libyan political structure with its tribal divisions and medieval monarchy. Impressed by Colonel Nasser in Egypt they set up a Revolutionary Command Council and waited for the right moment to strike.

It came in 1969 while King Idris was on holiday in Turkey. In a bloodless coup d’état they took over the administration and appointed a new cabinet with Gaddafi as prime minister and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. [viii] Domestically the change seemed beneficial. New schools were built, health centres (mostly staffed by Egyptian doctors) appeared even in the villages, and residents of the many shanty towns were rehoused in newly constructed two or three storey apartment houses. In the streets people seemed noticeably more self-confident.

After his experience of the previous regime Gaddafi had become critical of the parliamentary form of representative democracy. His argument was that ‘dividing the population into constituencies means that one member of parliament represents thousands. . . .  (and) the masses therefore are completely isolated from the representative and he, in turn, is totally separated  from them.’ He therefore introduced a new form of ‘direct democracy’ based on locally elected committees and congresses. This he called the Third Universal Theory and presented it to the public in his short and pocket-sized Green Book. Later he went farther, proclaiming Libya to be ‘The Libyan Arab Popular and Socialist Jamahiryya [i.e. ‘Peoples’ State] and establishing Revolutionary Committees of Gaddafi loyalists. [ix]

However eccentric some of these ideas may seem the experience gained by those who served on such committees could prove useful in post-Gaddafi Libya. With its regional differences some form of federal structure would seem the logical way forward and it is not too ridiculous to claim that, without realising it, the Gaddafi revolution has prepared the ground for a less doctrinaire but more effective Libyan Federation.

Yet federation or not, from Tripoli to Murzuq, from Kufra to Benghazi, the desert remains the only true reality. With the fall of Gaddafi many of the African soldiers he had recruited for his army have now fled home to Niger taking with them their modern rifles, ammunition and even artillery. According to recent reports most have joined the Islamic jihad, a disciplined force whose activities spread across the Sahara’s invisible borders and remain a threat to security in the region.

Venue: The Tent at St Ethelburga’s, 78 Bishopsgate, London EC2N 4AG (5 mins walk from Bank and Liverpool St tube stations). Light refreshments will be served beforehand (for which contributions will be welcome on the spot).

A conversation to explore the seeming contradictions and the emotional language which surround the Euro and the Eurozone.

The debate in the UK about the Euro seems to be schizophrenic: we want the Eurozone to prosper – but we want nothing to do with it; we want more regulation of our banks – but not at the European level; we proclaim national sovereignty – but we want globalisation, or at any rate acknowledge its inevitability; we want to be at the table – but we walk away.

Please register your interest in attending this meeting by 14 January to WPCT Secretariat, wpctrust@gmail.com (134 Main Road, Long Hanborough OX29 8JY tel. 01993 881 366).

TRUSTING CONVERSATIONS @ ST ETHELBURGA’S

St Ethelburga Centre for Reconciliation and Peace is a Christian-led, independent charity built from the damage of an IRA bomb, which aims to encourage and enable people to practise reconciliation and peace-making in their communities and lives. (www.stethelburgas.org/)

The Wyndham Place Charlemagne Trust brings together people of different cultural, political and religious backgrounds to address European and world policy issues from the perspective of ethics and faith.

The Wyndham Place Charlemagne Trust and the St Ethelburga’s Centre together are planning a new series of off the record conversations on topical issues of concern at quarterly intervals during the year. The conversation will start with a short introduction and then will provide an opportunity for all participants to express views, raise difficult questions and put forward ideas and proposals. The conversations will be wide ranging and crosscutting, informative and suggestive. Participants will be invited from professionals in business, the media, the academy, religion and politics to provide the basis for a rich variety of perspectives and experience.

Dates in 2012

* Thursday 19 January

* Thursday 19 April

* Thursday 19 July

* Thursday 18 October

Christine Lagarde, the eurozone's last chance (picture IMF)

Last year was dominated by the crisis in the eurozone.  It dominated the debate about the future of European integration, obviously, but has also turned out to be a major influence both in the UK and around the world.

Taking Europe first, it is absurd that the public finances of Greece, no matter how wretched a state they are in, should have been allowed to do this much harm to the wider European economy.  Greece represents only 2 per cent of the European GDP, after all.  But the interconnections between the different European countries are more strongly economic than they are political, and national governments found themselves almost overwhelmed.  Banks in France, Germany and elsewhere have billions of euros outstanding in loans to the Greek government, and the governments in those other countries are gravely afraid of a further need to bail out their banks.

The Greek-inspired debt crisis arose hard on the heels of the American-inspired banking crisis, leaving the banking system in already poor shape and in no condition to bear yet another major blow.  Only the resources of the national governments could save the banks, but as the crisis has gone on, even those national government resources are starting to become stretched.

But it was all unnecessary.  While Greek government debt amounts to 142 per cent of Greek GDP, eurozone government debt as a whole amounts to only 85 per cent of eurozone GDP.  This level is high but not unmanageable, if only the eurozone were ready to manage it.  Economics has integrated faster than politics.

Politics made an effort at striking back at the European Council summit meeting in December.  News coverage in Britain focussed on David Cameron’s decision to boycott the efforts by the other heads of government to build a political counterpart to their macroeconomic interdependence, but the substance of the new European treaty may well yet prove significant.  Bringing in new rules on budget balances and compelling national governments to justify their budgetary plans in front of each other might be the route back to order in the European economy.

Of course, it was out of the question that Britain might agree to be bound by the terms of this new treaty – the coalition agreement has seen to that – but the opportunity for Britain to help draft it was rejected as a sacrifice made to the eurosceptics in the Tory party.

This is how the eurozone crisis dominates British domestic politics.  Everything done by the coalition government has to be weighed up between the conflicting parts of the coalition – the Liberal Democrats mostly on one side and the Conservatives mostly on the other – and the conclusion is based on politics and not policy.  Anything that either side wants to achieve has to be traded off with something that the other side wants, and thus has to be traded off against anything else that its own advocates support, too.  There is a continual uneasy balance between the different centres of gravity within the government, and it is maintaining that balance that determines future government policy.

For example, the Lib Dem defeat in the electoral reform referendum in May 2011 obliged the Conservatives to permit the Liberal Democrats some other, minor victories in order to keep the grassroots of their party onside.  Perhaps the proposals to reform the House of Lords would have been abandoned if the referendum had gone the other way: concessions would have been needed for the right wing of the Tory party.  As it is, House of Lords reform is long overdue and shows no sign of emerging yet.  Coalition tensions are to blame.

It did not have to be this way.  Insiders were predicting confidently at the end of 2010 that disagreements over how to handle Europe had been settled within the government and that it would not be a divisive issue or a cause of instability.  That confidence was flawed, founded as it was on a lack of appreciation of how far-reaching the European Union really is, both in terms of what it does and also what it cannot do.

There seems to be a better understanding of the powers and the limitations of the EU elsewhere in the world.  Attempts by the EU to raise funds to support its bailout programme from rising economic powers such as China and Brazil were rebuffed precisely because those limitations were well-understood.  Allowed to install Christine Lagarde at the IMF after Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s position as managing director was blown away, the Europeans were left in no doubt that this was the last gasp of the old Euro-centric order in world finance.  The financial surpluses of the growing BRIC economics are not at the Europeans’ disposal, nor can they expect to retain the same dominant role in the global institutions in the future.

European influence will have to be earned in the future rather than inherited.  Crucial to that earning power will be a resolution of the debt crisis that started in Greece and has been allowed to threaten the whole of Europe.  If the markets cannot be reassured that the peripheral and no-so-peripheral members of the eurozone can grow their economies and service their debts, then the economic gloom will spread and deepen.  That market assurance can only come from more integration.  Die-hard eurosceptics who believe that national sovereignty should be protected always and everywhere must be terribly conflicted.

THE COALITION AND EUROPE AFTER THE HONEYMOON

24TH JANUARY – THE UK AND THE EUROPEAN AREA OF JUSTICE, FREEEDOM AND SECURITY

MARY SUMNER HOUSE, TUFTON STREET, LONDON SW1P 3RB

2.00 – 5.45 pm followed by a drinks reception

This, the fourth in a series of conferences held by the Federal Trust in conjunction with the Global Policy Institute and co-funded by the European Commission in London, examines the current state of Coalition policy regarding the European Area of Justice, Freedom and Security.

The conference series is entitled ‘The Coalition’s European Policy after the honeymoon’. The objective of these conferences is to review the European policy of the Coalition in its second year, examining in particular the growing internal and external strains upon the compromises which have until now underpinned its actions within the European Union.

This conference, The UK and the European Area of Justice, Freedom and Security, looks particularly at the specific situation of the United Kingdom in this policy area. We are also taking the opportunity to launch Dr Andrew Blick‘s latest publication: ‘Neither in nor out: Coalition policy in the EU Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’.

Our Commission speaker is Mr Jakub Boratynski, Head of Unit, Fight against organised crime, DG Home Affairs, European Commission. He will be joined by Professor Steve Peers of Essex University, a noted expert in the field

1.30 pm Registration

2.00 pm First session

3.00pm Questions and answers

3.30 pm Tea

4.00 pm Second session

5.00pm Question and answers

5.30pm Concluding remarks, Brendan Donnelly, Conference Chairman

5.45 – 6.30 pm Drinks reception

If you would like to attend this fourth event of five, please reply to alison.sutherland@fedtrust.co.uk.

The UN flag at half-mast

I wrote on this blog recently of the United Nations as having the weakness that it represents only states and not peoples.  Here is an example of the consequences of that weakness.

The picture above right shows the UN flag outside the United Nations headquarters in New York, flying at half-mast to mark the death of Kim Jong-il, president of North Korea.  (H/T Guido Fawkes)  The fact that he was a murderous dictator and a disgusting demagogue is not a reason to withhold this mark of respect, if you are the UN.  An organisation founded purely on the rights of states and not at all on the rights of citizens has no reason to look beyond the national governments of its members.  However bestial their behaviour, they remain equal members of the organisation, claiming equal standing in its decision-making.

While there is an outside chance that the UN will agree to take action against one of its own members, for example against Libya earlier this year, it depends on getting the approval of the Security Council in which five countries have a veto.  Of those five, one is an out-and-out autocracy and another is borderline, and those two have no wish to see democratic ideas and habits spread uncontrollably around the world.  In particular, China and Russia have been protectors and sponsors of North Korea and the regime of Kim Jong-il.

The lowering of that flag in New York is a visual symbol of how inadequate the global institutions really are, because they are based solely on the rights of states and not their citizens.

Graham Bishop

Federal Union and the Wyndham Place Charlemagne Trust held a discussion on 10 November 2011 about the current financial crisis in the light of the ethics and vision of the European idea.  The speakers were:

GRAHAM BISHOP, a widely respected economic and financial commentator on business and investment opportunities arising from the EU Single Market and Economic and Monetary Union.  He is currently a member of the European Commission’s consultative group on the impact of the Euro on the capital markets and a special advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on the EU.  He has recently published “The EU Fiscal Crisis: Forcing Eurozone Political Union in 2011?”

MALCOLM BROWN, Director of Mission and Public Affairs in the Church of England, a specialist in Christian Ethics, and author of a recent paper for the Synod on the debt and credit crisis.  Malcolm has been a parish priest in inner city and village parishes and was, through the 1990s, Director of the William Temple Foundation in Manchester, a “think tank” concerned with the roles of theology and churches in urban, industrial and economic life. He was subsequently Principal of the Eastern Region Ministry Course in Cambridge and now heads a team of specialist staff responsible for the Church of England’s engagement with national life and relationships with Parliament and public policy.

Read a report on the seminar here 111110 Report Eurocrisis meeting