EU - Parliamentary Elections: Taking back control: How European citizens are slowly gaining power

The news site Politico Europe recently produced one of many inevitable end-of-year rankings, “The women who shape Brussels – class of 2018”. It was interesting to see that, in a European Union that is widely perceived as undemocratic, MEPs were up high on this list. Among them, the so-called “tech MEP gang” scored highest. This “sisterhood”, as Politico calls them, includes influential MEPs such as Marietje Schaake, Eva Kaili, Mady Delvaux, and Pilar del Castillo Vera. They help shape European laws on robots, blockchain, intellectual property rights, and privacy. These women are feared in Silicon Valley. And in many European capitals too.

It is ironic that the only ones who don’t really seem to care about this powerful “gang” are the European voters they are supposed to represent, and in whose names they wage their fierce political battles. Many Europeans do not read Politico. What MEPs do – be they men or women – does not interest them in the least. Brussels, for them, is too far away. They perceive “Europe” as an elite project: “let’s take back control.”

This is a pity, because things have really changed a little in recent years. Citizens often associate MEPs with a toothless, expensive parliament that no one has any control over, but this perception is somewhat outdated. Under the 2010 Treaty of Lisbon, member states have given the EU additional powers in aspects of external relations such as trade agreements, foreign policy, and the EU’s position within the United Nations.

The European Parliament has gained power in these fields too. This follows a democratic logic: if one takes policy to a higher level, democratic control should follow. Although it is far from perfect, the treaty expanded democratic participation a little. And the “female tech gang” has made full use of it. By asking questions, vetoing draft proposals, and putting forward amendments to such proposals, MEPs from across the EU have influenced – for example – agreements on data exchange and counter-terrorism with the United States in a way that was impossible before.

According to a Eurobarometer survey published in September 2018, just 41 percent of European citizens know when the next European Parliament elections will be held (May 2019). Only 51 percent declare an interest in them. A poll taken in April this year found that “a great majority think that people would abstain [from voting in the elections] because ‘they believe that their vote will not change anything’, ‘they distrust the political system’ or ‘are not interested in politics or in elections in general’.” The prevailing assumption is still that the European Parliament is useless because citizens “aren’t heard anyway”.

European Parliament is useless because citizens “aren’t heard anyway”.

In a remarkable inaugural lecture at the University of Amsterdam in early November, European law professor Christina Eckes challenged that assumption. Eckes pointed out that “while transferring powers to the EU limits the unilateral autonomy of national governments, it increases control for EU citizens over central aspects of international relations, such as the conclusion of international agreements.” In other words: the transfer of power to Brussels may weaken member states, but it empowers citizens. Why? Because the European Parliament now has a key role in negotiating and finalising international treaties. As a result, it can exercise more control over institutions that implement these treaties – since they are European – than national parliaments can. In this way, Eckes argues, “European integration allows European citizens to retain control over international policies in a globalised world.”

Read more: Taking back control: How European citizens are slowly gaining power | European Council on Foreign Relations

The Gender Gap? Older women will rule the world, MIT expert says - by A.Pawlowski

If you're a woman with a bit of life experience, you already know you're the boss.

You're more likely to drive health care decisions in your family, control household spending, care for millennials and elders, start a business and initiate a divorce. You have the longevity advantage over men.

In other words, you rule.

But does the world know it? Older women can sometimes feel like they're invisible to workplaces and businesses, but they're actually the trailblazers others should be watching, says Joseph F. Coughlin, director of the AgeLab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the new book, "The Longevity Economy: Unlocking the World's Fastest-Growing, Most Misunderstood Market."

As people get older, the future is female, he argues, with women better prepared for life after middle age than their male peers.

"One of the greatest under-appreciated sources of innovation and new business may in fact be women over 50 with new ideas, lots of life ahead of them and with the verve to get it done," Coughlin told TODAY.

He explained why older women will rule the world.

Women do more. They have more education than at any time in history. They're likely to live longer.

A woman is the researcher of the house. Women are far more likely to go online not just to do research for themselves, but be the go-to researcher for millennials, who identify their middle-aged mothers as their best friend.

She is the caregiver-in-chief. Women are caring for more parents than they had ever planned — their parents as well as their in-laws. Getting to 100 is so common now that we see birthday cards in the drugstore for centenarians. There may be three or four generations under the care of one matriarch.

A woman is the chief consumer officer of the house. She's the one who knows what groceries are bought, what bills are being paid, how that house actually works. The majority of car purchases are directly influenced or done by women. If they're luxury cars, the numbers go up even more. Home improvement is directed by the woman. Probably most striking is that 80-90 cents on the dollar of every healthcare decision is made by a woman.

Because of all these factors, she is likely to be the person who is closest to understanding what the new jobs and the opportunities of living longer, better are going to be.\

The number one divorce rate in the country is among the 50-plus, mostly initiated by the woman.

When we talk to men about what they think retirement is going to be, it's almost celebratory: If they've saved their money, they see it as a time to play golf, take that trip, buy that new car. And they often talk about spending time with their wives.

I can't tell you how many women have told me, 'I don't know who this man is on my couch but I wish he would just go and get a job. I have routines, I have things to do and he's always there and he's always asking me what to do next.'

I think men, particularly those of us over 50, need to up our game. We really have to take a lesson from women that life is more than work; that we need to develop new interests and keep that romance going.

The relationship began decades earlier based upon what you brought to the table and what you created together. Suddenly in older age, men get so caught into a routine — partly because of our employment and lifestyle — that they forget that they need to continue to be exciting and delighting.

Read the complete report: Older women will rule the world, MIT expert says | Euronews

USA: Destiny Lost? Trump and a US Off Its Moorings - by Michael J. Brenner

Americans are struggling to draw into focus their exalted image of themselves and reality. They are not doing a very good job of it. The gap is wide and growing — and it is this very gap that Donald Trump seeks to exploit for his personal political gain.

Trump understands that Americans feel powerless in good measure because of what has been happening beyond the country’s shores, and over which the United States lacks the means to exercise decisive influence.

Our collective response has been one of avoidance and evasion. Why? Because We Americans seem to fear that if we stare at reality squarely, we will find reality staring back at us in a most discomforting way.

To a considerable extent, that is a consequence of our country’s foreign policy elites’ inclination to over-promise and under-deliver. Trump pinpoints that weakness most skillfully. The true irony of his act, however, is that he is bound to be the biggest over-promiser and under-deliverer ever.

Fading prowess is one of the most difficult things for humans to cope with – whether it be an individual or a nation. By nature, we prize our strength and competence. We dread decline and its intimations of extinction.

This is especially so in the United States where for many the individual and the collective are inseparable. Today, events are occurring that contradict the national narrative of a nation with a unique destiny. That creates cognitive dissonance.

Our thoughts and actions in response to that deeply unsettling reality conform to the classic behavioral pattern of those suffering from acute cognitive dissonance.

Denial is its cardinal feature. That is to say, denial of those things that cause stress and anxiety. Sublimation methods of various kinds are deployed to keep them below the threshold of conscious awareness.

We all do that, to some degree, on a personal level. Groups, even very large ones, can do it as well.

In the latter case, we are speaking of troublesome military actions, abusive state behavior like the conduct of torture, diplomatic deals that are permissive of unsavory actions by others, or studied misrepresentations by government and media which hide unpleasant truths from the populace.

At a more abstract level, we repress or minimize perceptions of us by other peoples, our relative well-being compared to other societies (medical care, maternity leave, pensions), or national competence as demonstrated by accomplishment in comparison with other societies (constructing mass transportation systems).

The crudest denial mechanism is literal avoidance. If you don’t travel abroad, you don’t see. You don’t inform yourself about any of the above mentioned matters by:

    abstaining from following the news,
    reading only reassuring reports,
    excluding all contradictory sources as “alien” or “subversive;”
    declaring the world as too complex to decipher;
    appraising serious issues of national policy as “above my pay grade,” while ignoring the core democratic precept that as the citizen of a republic, nothing is above your pay grade

Another avoidance mechanism is to stress systematically those features of other nations or situations that conform to the requirements of the American national narrative while neglecting or downplaying opposite features. 

Read more: Destiny Lost? Trump and a US Off Its Moorings - The Globalist