Joe Biden, you may have heard, is hiring a lot of women. During his campaign, he promised to appoint the most diverse cabinet in American history. So far, he has hired an all-female communications team and lined up several other women for senior jobs, some of which have never been filled by a woman before. As with the selection of his vice-president, Kamala Harris, the reception has been rapturous. What better way to fumigate Trumpism than by filling the executive with qualified women in senior positions? “There goes the old boys’ club,” says NBC. An article in the Washington Post lists four reasons why Biden’s cabinet should be 50% women: he owes it to them; it looks bad when other countries such as Finland and South Africa have got there first; qualified women are easy to find; and finally, it’s just about damn time.
Behind the scenes, there is pressure on Biden to make good on racial diversity and appoint more people of colour in general. Some Democratic members of Congress have called for at least five more Latinos to be appointed to senior cabinet positions. Asian American and Pacific Islander lawmakers have written that it will be “deeply disappointing if several AAPIs are not nominated”. Like victors dividing the spoils of war, a diverse array of Americans is scrambling to stake a claim in the new administration.
Read more at:
Joe Biden’s drive for diversity in top political jobs is only an illusion of change | Race | The Guardian
Showing posts with label Diversity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Diversity. Show all posts
12/8/20
4/2/18
EU Official: Islam Is Part of Our History, Present, and Future
 |
| Frans Timmermans First EU Vice President |
There is no doubt that Timmermans’ statement is true, but not quite in the way he meant.
Timmermans did hint that he was aware Europe might not travel a smooth and placid path to the glorious multicultural future: “The way we help our citizens -- whatever their background may be -- to embrace the diversity that is a reality in European societies is going to determine much of our collective future.”
In 2015, Timmermans noted:
“[D]iversity is now in some parts of Europe seen as a threat. Diversity
comes with challenges. But diversity is humanity’s destiny. There is
not going to be, even in the remotest places of this planet, a nation
that will not see diversity in its future.”
Read more: EU Official: Islam Is Part of Our History, Present, and Future | Homeland Security
5/15/16
Euroskepticism’s empty promises - not able to spell out their alternatives to European integration
With so much effort aimed at dismantling the European project, it is
time to ask the Euroskeptics to spell out their alternatives to European
integration. Of course, many conservative and libertarian Euroskeptics,
such as Daniel Hannan,
stress that their goal is not to destroy political cooperation on the
continent, or even to return to protectionism.
What they want is to return to a Europe made up of sovereign, democratic and self-governing nation states that are cosmopolitan and open to trade, investment, and, to a large degree, to immigration.
Boris Johnson,
for example, famously identified himself as being “about the only
politician … who is actually willing to stand up and say that he’s
pro-immigration.” The EU, argue the skeptics, is neither a necessary nor
sufficient guarantee of such openness. The EU, they say, is a
distortion that opens market and migrant flows within Europe, while
jealously guarding itself against competition from overseas.
Born out of the ashes of World War II, the aim of the European integration project was to make war between Europe’s leading nations impossible. It would do this by tying them together economically and politically, in what should have become a European federal state.
The EU’s critics like to emphasize that the premise is outdated, and that the animated policy debates in the 1940s and 1950s are now obsolete. As L.P. Hartley’s proverbial quote goes, the past is a foreign country — they do things differently there.
In reality, any alternative to being strong and united as one in Europe, is doomed to eventualy backfire,
Unfortunately many shortsighted Euroskeptics seem to believe that "charity starts at home".
Read more: Euroskepticism’s empty promise – POLITICO
What they want is to return to a Europe made up of sovereign, democratic and self-governing nation states that are cosmopolitan and open to trade, investment, and, to a large degree, to immigration.
Born out of the ashes of World War II, the aim of the European integration project was to make war between Europe’s leading nations impossible. It would do this by tying them together economically and politically, in what should have become a European federal state.
The EU’s critics like to emphasize that the premise is outdated, and that the animated policy debates in the 1940s and 1950s are now obsolete. As L.P. Hartley’s proverbial quote goes, the past is a foreign country — they do things differently there.
In reality, any alternative to being strong and united as one in Europe, is doomed to eventualy backfire,
Unfortunately many shortsighted Euroskeptics seem to believe that "charity starts at home".
Read more: Euroskepticism’s empty promise – POLITICO
8/28/15
Europe - A patient in need of intensive care - by Martin Winter
The European Union has six difficult years behind it. But the coming
years won't be any easier. The crisis doesn't mean the end of the idea
of a peaceful European partnership, but it has certainly dispelled more
than one European illusion.
The years of the financial and debt crises were both instructive and very bitter. Instructive, because they revealed the flaws in the political construction that, after the end of the Cold War, led the EU down the exuberant path of believing it was destined to be the new world power. Bitter, because they brought with them the realization that the member states lack the strength to fix these flaws.
Neither of the two big plans - meant to strengthen the EU to the outside and bind it closer together on the inside - had the desired effect. Just the opposite. The euro has brought not more political integration, but instead growing disintegration. Trust and solidarity have given way to distrust and old stereotypes. And the common foreign and security policy is still just a shadow of what the visionaries had hoped for.
Instead of being surrounded by friends and partners, the EU once again finds itself - as Britain's The Economist wrote - in a ring of fire. Europe and Russia are again arming themselves against each other. There's war in Ukraine. Unrest rules the Caucasus.
The wars in Syria and Iraq are threatening to drive the entire Middle East into the ground. The Arab Spring has devolved into an Autumn of Violence. Islamic State is expanding and becoming a potent threat to Europe.
Europe has become a patient in need of intensive care. The euro is limping along from one emergency operation to the next. When things get dicey on the foreign policy front, it's the big member states that again have to intervene. And they mostly act according to German, French or British interests.
The EU is still digesting the political and financial consequences of its eastern and southern expansion. And the current refugee crisis has shown that every EU state is looking out for No.1. The illusion born in the 1990s - that a common currency would automatically bring with it a political union - has shattered.
The crisis did not just expose the EU's construction flaws, it also revealed how they might be fixed. But this is where Europe's dilemma begins. No member state is prepared to relinquish national sovereignty over economic, social, and security issues to a European central government in order to save the grand idea of the EU.
The bloc has come a very long way since the first step toward its creation was taken in 1951. But the people are still not prepared to replace the current union of sovereign nations with a European federation.
Note EU-Digest: Great review by DW. Yes indeed, as long as we realize that this takes a combined effort of all EU nations to solve and that we don't listen to Nationalists like Geert Wilders and others who would like to turn back the clock to reestablish borders, national currencies and grocery style economics. One major priority for the EU should be to seriously review its Middle East and Eastern European foreign policies, which is presently linked to that of the US and has been a constant and historical source of.grief for the EU in every sense of the word. All we have to do is to look at the present avalanche of Middle Eastern and North African migrants now streaming into Turkey and the EU, and review the cause of it.
Read more: Europe - A patient in need of intensive care | Europe | DW.COM | 28.08.2015
The years of the financial and debt crises were both instructive and very bitter. Instructive, because they revealed the flaws in the political construction that, after the end of the Cold War, led the EU down the exuberant path of believing it was destined to be the new world power. Bitter, because they brought with them the realization that the member states lack the strength to fix these flaws.
Neither of the two big plans - meant to strengthen the EU to the outside and bind it closer together on the inside - had the desired effect. Just the opposite. The euro has brought not more political integration, but instead growing disintegration. Trust and solidarity have given way to distrust and old stereotypes. And the common foreign and security policy is still just a shadow of what the visionaries had hoped for.
Instead of being surrounded by friends and partners, the EU once again finds itself - as Britain's The Economist wrote - in a ring of fire. Europe and Russia are again arming themselves against each other. There's war in Ukraine. Unrest rules the Caucasus.
The wars in Syria and Iraq are threatening to drive the entire Middle East into the ground. The Arab Spring has devolved into an Autumn of Violence. Islamic State is expanding and becoming a potent threat to Europe.
Europe has become a patient in need of intensive care. The euro is limping along from one emergency operation to the next. When things get dicey on the foreign policy front, it's the big member states that again have to intervene. And they mostly act according to German, French or British interests.
The EU is still digesting the political and financial consequences of its eastern and southern expansion. And the current refugee crisis has shown that every EU state is looking out for No.1. The illusion born in the 1990s - that a common currency would automatically bring with it a political union - has shattered.
The crisis did not just expose the EU's construction flaws, it also revealed how they might be fixed. But this is where Europe's dilemma begins. No member state is prepared to relinquish national sovereignty over economic, social, and security issues to a European central government in order to save the grand idea of the EU.
The bloc has come a very long way since the first step toward its creation was taken in 1951. But the people are still not prepared to replace the current union of sovereign nations with a European federation.
Note EU-Digest: Great review by DW. Yes indeed, as long as we realize that this takes a combined effort of all EU nations to solve and that we don't listen to Nationalists like Geert Wilders and others who would like to turn back the clock to reestablish borders, national currencies and grocery style economics. One major priority for the EU should be to seriously review its Middle East and Eastern European foreign policies, which is presently linked to that of the US and has been a constant and historical source of.grief for the EU in every sense of the word. All we have to do is to look at the present avalanche of Middle Eastern and North African migrants now streaming into Turkey and the EU, and review the cause of it.
Read more: Europe - A patient in need of intensive care | Europe | DW.COM | 28.08.2015
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