Antarctic lake mission targets life and climate signs

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News



Weather at the site can be stormy, requiring protection for people and gear
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A pioneering British expedition to sample a lake under the Antarctic ice hopes to find unknown forms of life and clues to future climate impacts.

The mission will use hot water to melt its way through ice 3km (2 miles) thick to reach Lake Ellsworth, which has been isolated from the outside world for at least 125,000 years - maybe a million.

The team hopes to be the first to sample a sub-glacial Antarctic lake.

An engineering team leaves the UK later this week along with 70 tonnes of gear.

The project, funded to the tune of £7m by the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, aims to obtain samples of the lake water itself and of sediment on the lake floor.



The heavy equipment has to be airlifted in to Antarctica, followed by a long trek over land
"Our project will look for life in Lake Ellsworth, and look for the climate record of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet," said the project's principal investigator Professor Martin Siegert from Edinburgh University.

"If we're successful, we'll make profound discoveries on both the limits to life on Earth and the history of West Antarctica," he told BBC News.

Understanding the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is crucial to forecasting future climate change impacts, as it holds enough ice to raise sea levels globally by at least 3m (10ft) and perhaps 7m (23ft).

Exploring sub-glacial lakes may also help scientists design missions to search for life on other worlds such as Jupiter's moon Europa, which is thought to feature a liquid ocean beneath a thick layer of ice.

Pushing the boundaries
Lake Ellsworth is about 10km long and 2-3km wide - about the same size as Lake Windermere, England's biggest.

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Start Quote

Any form of life we find there, we won't have encountered before”

Dr David Pearce
BAS
But that is where the similarity ends.

Ellsworth lies in a valley in the bedrock of Antarctica, with 3km of ice above.

The water is kept liquid by natural geothermal heat coming from the Earth's interior.

It has been mapped by using ground-penetrating radar and seismic tests.

Among other things, those investigations revealed that the lake has a soft floor, which presumably means a thick layer of sediment.

But reaching the lake and taking samples involves a mission that pushes the boundaries of engineering skill and ingenuity.

The hot-water drill is basically a spraying device on the bottom of a hose 3.2km long.

Ninety thousand litres of pure water will be made at the Ellsworth site by heating and then filtering ice, using a boiler taken along for the purpose.




Hot water will be sprayed from the bottom of the hose, melting its way to Lake Ellsworth
It will be pumped down the 3.2km-long hose and out of the nozzles at the bottom.

With the water at a scalding 97C, it should melt a smooth, uniform hole about 36cm across down to the bottom of the ice.

A 5m-long probe will then be lowered through the hole and into the lake, carrying 24 flasks that will gather water samples at various depths.

It will also carry lights and a high-definition video camera, and filters to draw solids from the water.

Much of the equipment has been designed and built at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) in Southampton, under the supervision of Matt Mowlem.

"This is an unknown environment - we don't know for example whether there will be dissolved gases in the water," he said.

"So the water at its pressure of 300 atmospheres will be sampled. But when we pull the probe up and the flasks hit the cold air in the borehole, the water will try to freeze; the pressure then increases to around 2,700 atmospheres, and that's greater than anything experienced in ocean engineering."

Once the probe has been hauled up, a coring device will be lowered down the borehole to take samples of the lake floor sediment.



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1. A hot water drill will melt through the frozen ice sheet, which is up to 3km (2 miles) thick. After drilling, they will have an estimated 24 hours to collect samples before the borehole re-freezes

2. A probe will be lowered through the borehole to capture water samples

3. A specialised corer will then recover sediment from the floor of the lake through the same borehole

Source: Subglacial Lake Ellsworth Consortium

The whole process will be a race against time.

Water on the sides of the borehole will freeze, making it progressively smaller. Professor Siegert estimates there is a window of about 24 hours to complete the dual sampling before the hole becomes too small.

First contact
No-one has yet sampled any of the estimated 387 sub-glacial lakes on Antarctica, though a Russian-led team is targeting the biggest - Lake Vostok - and a US crew is preparing to investigate Lake Whillans.

The Lake Vostok project was delayed for years over concerns that drilling might contaminate the water with organisms from the surface.

The UK team has designed its equipment and its procedures in order to avoid taking unwanted hitch-hikers down to the lake.




Russian and US teams are targeting Lakes Vostok and Whillans respectively
What might be in the water is a mystery waiting to be unravelled.

"Just about everywhere we look on the planet, we find life, from the outer reaches of the stratosphere to the deepest ocean trenches," said David Pearce from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), who heads the search for microbiological life in Lake Ellsworth.

"Any form of life we find there, we won't have encountered before - there will probably be viruses, and we may have bacteria, archaea (other single-celled organisms) and... maybe fungi."

If the lake contains no life, said Dr Pearce, that would be interesting as well, helping to define the conditions under which life can and cannot exist.

Different worlds
How different any new organisms are from what we know already will depend to a large extent on how long Lake Ellsworth has remained isolated - in other words, for how long the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has remained intact.


This is also the key issue on the climate side of the project, which basically involves discovering how likely the ice sheet is to melt in the coming decades and centuries.

"There is some evidence from outside Antarctica that sea levels were higher at various times in the last million years - 125,000 years ago, 380,000 years ago - but we have no evidence that the water came from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet," said Professor Mike Bentley from Durham University.

"So one of the things we're looking for in our sediment core is... marine sediments that would look very different from lake sediments."

If the team can reconstruct a record of when the ice sheet melted in the past, that will give scientists a better understanding of how it is likely to behave as temperatures rise in future - and what scale of temperature rise would be needed to melt it again.

The equipment will be delivered to the Ellsworth base during the coming Antarctic summer, and stored away against the harsh winter to follow.

The main scientific party will fly out in about a year's time, unpack the equipment, and begin drilling into the unknown.

Backpackers' guide to the eurozone crisis: Brussels
By Chris Mason and Chris Brindley
BBC News, Frankfurt



Demonstrators on the streets of Brussels at the heart of the eurozone


Politicians attracting blame is as predictable as supermodels attracting the paparazzi and picnics attracting wasps.

But on our trip across the Eurozone, to Greece , Backpackers' Guide to the eurozone crisis: Italy and Germany, we have been struck by the scale, breadth and intensity of the criticism of how the political classes at every level - regional, national, European - are coping with the eurozone crisis.

From those on strike in Athens, to the chief executive of Pirelli in Milan, to commuters in Frankfurt, there was a recurring sense that the political response has been confused, slow and contradictory.

So the logical final stop for our tour for Radio 5live was Brussels, the political heart not just of the eurozone, but the European Union.

Big questions
There is no disputing the slew of summits and marathon of meetings this crisis has provoked.

The President of the European Commission, Jose-Manuel Barroso, has set out his action plan and said banks should set aside more assets to help guard against future losses.

The European Parliament has passed a resolution calling for a recapitalisation of European banks, harmonising national tax systems and common measures for dealing with tax fraud.

All of this poses big questions. Big questions about the future of the euro. Big questions about the future of the European Union.

And big questions about the UK's relationship with Brussels.

"There is a mood of panic and pessimism rippling through the streets of Brussels at the moment. Nobody quite knows what the answer is," the Conservative Leader in Europe, Martin Callanan MEP, told us.

Richard Howitt, a Labour MEP for the East of England, said: "The eurozone is very important because it's Britain's export market."

"The attempts there have been to introduce proper financial regulations are very important," he added, before emphasising that in his view this crisis was not just about the euro, but global in scale.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

There is a mood of panic and pessimism rippling through the streets of Brussels at the moment. Nobody quite knows what the answer is”

Martin Callanan MEP
Conservative Leader in Europe,
Attention switch
There is also nervousness here that Germany, seen by many as the powerhouse of Europe, might be stuttering economically, after eight think tanks projected a sharp fall in growth there.

Mr Callanan told us it was "far fetched" to assume Germany would be in a position to guarantee the debts of countries such as Greece and their "attention would switch to their own economy".

Most debates in Brussels are viewed through a single prism and this crisis appears to be no different.

Those in favour of an ever closer union argue the current turbulence is proof the binding together of European countries has not gone far enough.

Both the chief executive of Pirelli, Marco Tronchetti Provera and Stefan Schneider, the chief economist at Deutsche Bank Research, have echoed this perspective to us this week.

Even some eurosceptics in Britain accept this is likely to be necessary, for those who use the euro and are up for it. Scratch Britain out on both counts.

Others say it is proof the euro was a bad idea in the first place.

The impression we leave here with is stark.

The European Union has seen nothing like this before and seasoned observers here have no idea where this is going to end.

What most do agree on is the frenetic pace of current events is likely to leave the European Union looking rather different. But how different, and in what way?

Chris Mason and Chris Brindley are travelling across the eurozone all week, reporting for Radio 5 Live, the 5 Live blog and the BBC News website. They will be reporting from Greece, Italy, Germany and Belgium


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13798000

Texas police kill 8th-grader carrying pellet gun

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) — The parents of an eighth grader who was fatally shot by police inside his South Texas school are demanding to know why officers took lethal action, but police said the boy was brandishing — and refused to drop — what appeared to be a handgun and that the officers acted correctly.
The weapon turned out to be a pellet gun that closely resembled the real thing, police said late Wednesday, several hours after 15-year-old Jaime Gonzalez was repeatedly shot in a hallway at Cummings Middle School in Brownsville. No one else was injured.
"Why was so much excess force used on a minor?" the boy's father, Jaime Gonzalez Sr., asked The Associated Press outside the family's home Wednesday night. "Three shots. Why not one that would bring him down?"
His mother, Noralva Gonzalez, showed off a photo on her phone of a beaming Jaime in his drum major uniform standing with his band instructors. Then she flipped through three close-up photos she took of bullet wounds in her son's body, including one in the back of his head.
"What happened was an injustice," she said angrily. "I know that my son wasn't perfect, but he was a great kid."
Interim Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez said the teen was pointing the weapon at officers and "had plenty of opportunities to lower the gun and listen to the officers' orders, and he didn't want to."
The chief said his officers had every right to do what they did to protect themselves and other students even though there weren't many others in the hallway at the time. Police said officers fired three shots.


Shortly before the confrontation, Jaime had walked into a classroom and punched a boy in the nose for no apparent reason, Rodriguez said. Police did not know why he pulled out the weapon, but "we think it looks like this was a way to bring attention to himself," Rodriguez said.
About 20 minutes elapsed between police receiving a call about an armed student and shots being fired, according to police and student accounts. Authorities declined to share what the boy said before he was shot.
The shooting happened during first period at the school in Brownsville, a city at Texas' southern tip just across the Mexican border. Teachers locked classroom doors and turned off lights, and some frightened students dove under their desks. They could hear police charge down the hallway and shout for Gonzalez to drop the weapon, followed by several shots.
Two officers fired three shots, hitting Gonzalez at least twice, police said.
David A. Dusenbury, a retired deputy police chief in Long Beach, Calif., who now consults on police tactics, said the officers were probably justified.
If the boy were raising the gun as if to fire at someone, "then it's unfortunate, but the officer certainly would have the right under the law to use deadly force."
A recording of police radio traffic posted on KGBT-TV's website indicates that officers responding to the school believed the teen had a handgun. An officer is heard describing the teen's clothes and appearance, saying he's "holding a handgun, black in color." The officer also said that from the front door, he could see the boy in the school's main office.
Less than two minutes later, someone yells over the radio "shots fired" and emergency crews are asked to respond. About two minutes later, someone asks where the boy was shot, prompting responses that he was shot in the chest and "from the back of the head."
Administrators said the school would be closed Thursday but students would be able to attend classes at a new elementary school that isn't being used.
Superintendent Carl Montoya remembered Gonzalez as "a very positive young man."
"He did music. He worked well with everybody. Just something unfortunately happened today that caused his behavior to go the way it went. So I don't know," he said Wednesday.
Gonzalez Sr. said he had no idea where his son got the gun or why he brought it to school, adding: "We wouldn't give him a gift like that."
He said he last saw his son around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, when the boy said goodbye before leaving to catch the bus to school. And he said nothing seemed amiss the night before when he, his wife and their son went out for nachos then went home and watched a movie.
Gonzalez Sr. was struggling to reconcile the day's events, saying his son seemed to be doing better in school and was always helpful around the neighborhood mowing neighbors' lawns, washing dogs and carrying his toolbox off to fix other kids' bikes.
Two dozen of his son's friends and classmates gathered in the dark street outside the family's home Wednesday night. Jaime's best friend, 16-year-old Star Rodriguez, said her favorite memory was when Jaime came to her party Dec. 29 and they danced and sang together.
"He was like a brother to me," she said.
___
Associated Press writers Diana Heidgerd and Danny Robbins in Dallas, and Mike Graczyk in Houston contributed to this story.

Eurozone in new crisis as ratings agency downgrades nine countries
Standard & Poor's strips France of its AAA credit rating, rekindling fears in the markets over future of single currency

Europe has been plunged into a fresh crisis after France was stripped of its coveted AAA credit rating in a mass downgrade of nine eurozone countries by the ratings agency Standard & Poor's.

S&P said austerity was driving Europe even deeper into financial crisis as it also cut Austria's triple-A rating, and relegated Portugal and Cyprus to junk status.

The humiliating loss of France's top-rated status leaves Germany as the only other major economy inside the eurozone with a AAA rating, and rekindled financial market anxiety about a possible break-up of the single currency.

S&P brought an abrupt end to the uneasy calm that has existed in the eurozone since the turn of the year by downgrading the ratings of Cyprus, Italy, Portugal and Spain by two notches. Austria, France, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia were all cut by one notch.

The agency said that its actions on eurozone ratings were "primarily driven by insufficient policy measures by EU leaders to fully address systemic stresses". It added that fiscal austerity alone "risks becoming self-defeating".

But French finance minister François Baroin downplayed the move, saying it was "not a catastrophe".

European finance ministers tried to control the crisis by pledging to agree a new treaty to tighten fiscal rules at a summit at the end of this month.

However, the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said that what Europe needed was more concerted action by all 27 EU member states rather than "more treaties". "Just dealing with the fiscal side of things which of course is absolutely essential – it is one side of the equation – must be accompanied by a more concerted effort, which I believe is best done with all 27 countries involved, to raise our productivity."

Speaking on a visit to Dublin, Clegg said: "We don't need to reach for new treaties or agreements or policies. We know what we need to do. We need to complete the single market and create a dynamic and greater growth in the EU to help us out of these problems."

Britain was not at risk of a downgrade from S&P, but Berlin sought to soften the blow to French pride when a German politician close to Angela Merkel said the UK should have been first in line for a cut in its AAA status on the grounds that its collective private and public sector debts are the largest in Europe.

Michael Fuchs, deputy leader of the Christian Democrats, said: "This step is out of order. Standard and Poor's must stop playing politics. Why doesn't it act on the highly indebted United States or highly indebted Britain?"

He added: "If the agency downgrades France, it should also downgrade Britain in order to be consistent."

City analysts predicted that some European banks will be downgraded in the coming week, reflecting the fact that their national governments are now seen as riskier. The French and Austrian downgrades will also reduce the firepower of the region's main bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility.

Mohamed El-Erian, head of the bond trading giant Pimco, predicted serious long-term consequences. He told Newsnight that the move "places a wedge in the centre of the eurozone, making a solution much more difficult".

Rumours of S&P's move had earlier sent shares falling, pushed the euro down to a 16-month low against the dollar, and forced the European Central Bank to step in to buy Italian bonds again.

The FTSE 100 dropped 100 points before recovering late in the day to finish down 26 points at 5636, while the Dow Jones in New York fell 120 points to 12350 by afternoon trading before recovering some ground by the close.

Investors piled into safe haven assets such as the dollar, while the UK was rewarded with even lower borrowing costs as 10-year bonds slipped below 2%.

The new technocratic government in Athens added to the gloom after talks over a second major bailout to rescue Greece's finances broke up without an agreement. Officials from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the ECB arrive in Athens on Tuesday for talks on a new €130bn bailout package, which will be impossible unless Greece first strikes a deal with the banks, insurance companies and hedge funds that have lent it money.

The Greek government said talks with its creditors would resume on Wednesday, but analysts voiced concerns that hedge funds were blocking a deal that involves them writing off 50% of their loans.

Germany considers Greece to be the main faultline in the euro crisis and is urgently seeking a resolution to talks over a deal, but has insisted Brussels holds out for a private sector deal. Officials hinted on Friday night that Greece could default on 100% of its loans if the private sector refuses to come back to the negotiating table and accept a voluntary agreement.

A spokesman for the troika said: "We very much hope, however, that Greece, with the support of the euro area, will be in a position to re-engage constructively with the private sector with a view to finalising a mutually acceptable agreement on a voluntary debt exchange consistent with the October 26/27 agreement, in the best interest of both Greece and the euro area."

Unprecedented action by the European Central Bank in recent weeks had reassured many investors that policymakers were getting on top of the crisis. The ECB has lent more than €400bn to eurozone banks to bolster their reserves and prevent a repeat of the 2008 credit crunch.

But the S&P downgrades are likely to undermine these efforts and make foreign banks wary of lending to their counterparts in Europe.

Graham Neilson, chief investment strategist at Cairn Capital, warned: "This is just the start. There will be more to come, and not just in Europe – there is simply still too much debt and not enough growth in developed economies."

France has already shown its anger at the prospect of a downgrade. Central Bank chief Christian Noyer raised eyebrows in London before Christmas when he said Britain "has more deficits, as much debt, more inflation, less growth than us".

Querio saber si es posible de hacer lo mismo en castillano para los amigos mios espanoles hombre. Amistad y gracias. Felipe. Ole !

Je veux savoir si c'est possible de le faire aussi en castillan pour mes amis espagnols (en Espagne l'espagnol s'appelle le castillan).




Good idear to learn english because my english is too bad but if you want i can help you to speak spanish (my spanish better). I give you my best regards. Philippe

Either you put it in Culture or I can start you a new category.

Today i had an english lesson with my english neighboor and he had a table tennis lesson ( 4/1 for me), its seems fair , no ?

Do you want me to open a german topic here ? Don't be afraid guy, it's only a joke ...

JaJa, your neighbour has not yet had enough of being beaten everyday? Or has he not yet learnt his lesson ?

We didn't play since 2 month coz of my backpains and i was happy to win after this stop . In reality , he get better and if i win easyly before, now it's hard and two sets were close

The New French Hacker-Artist Underground



Thirty years ago, in the dead of night, a group of six Parisian teenagers pulled off what would prove to be a fateful theft. They met up at a small cafè near the Eiffel Tower to review their plans—again—before heading out into the dark. Lifting a grate from the street, they descended a ladder to a tunnel, an unlit concrete passageway carrying a cable off into the void. They followed the cable to its source: the basement of the ministry of telecommunications. Horizontal bars blocked their way, but the skinny teens all managed to wedge themselves through and ascend to the building’s ground floor. There they found three key rings in the security office and a logbook indicating that the guards were on their rounds.

For the rest ;

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/01/ff_ux/

Internet
ACTA non grata

Several days of internet user and web hacker protests against the ACTA agreement, which obliges its 39 signatory states to actively prosecute web piracy, “have had no effect”, writes Gazeta Wyborcza. Warsaw is to sign the document later this week. Fearing ACTA will restrict online freedom of speech, internet users and numerous organisations supporting them have for several days been blocking government websites.

On Saturday January 21, the Anonymous group carried out a successful denial-of-access attack on several major state websites and on Monday January 23 a movement calling itself the “Polish Underground” hacked the Prime Minister’s website to post a film of a video blogger known as “Baśka”, dressed up to resemble General Jaruzelski declaring martial law.

The anti-ACTA protesters accuse the government of having failed to consult the public on the agreement and are demanding an open debate on copyright laws that has already begun in the press. “In order to protect intellectual property, ACTA uses a nuclear bomb, the effects of the explosion of which are unpredictable”, warns Gazeta Wyborcza, suggesting the treaty should be reviewed by the European Court of Justice.

“Web is foundation of young people’s lives”



As the Polish government prepares to sign the anti-piracy ACTA treaty, thousands of young internet users have taken to the streets in protest. Like most of their fellow Europeans, they fear it may “label their existential choices and free expression of identity as piracy,” explains internet anthropologist Piotr Cichocki.
Grzegorz Szymanik

Grzegorz Szymanik: What does the Internet mean for young people?

Piotr Cichocki: I once researched the Grono community portal [a Polish social network similar to Facebook], observing how its users create their virtual identities through profiles. Many introduced themselves by means of linking. Instead of writing about themselves, they’d post quotations from books, songs. Or links to YouTube videos or MP3 files. Their identity was woven of many meanings collected on the web.

What does this signify? That online information shapes internet users’ identities. Provides building material for them. And young people share what they discover. Preventing them from doing so would be like identity amputation. They are protesting because they are afraid that ACTA may label their existential choices and free expression of identity as piracy. They’re really frightened that someone wants to confiscate a part of their identity.

That’s why everyone is protesting, regardless of political sympathies: young people in favour of all kinds of options, both Antifa [an anti-fascist movement] and the far right. For them, the internet is an environment in which they function, gathering information about what interests them and shaping themselves politically. And they want the web to remain this way.

And what about copyright?

These young people don’t regard what they do on the web as theft. If something is there, you use it. You can consider this in terms of breaking the law.

You should. Because it’s theft.

It’s theft, but you can’t use the same terms with information or culture as with material property.

How the sale and exchange of culture is perceived today seems a rather new invention. Henry Jenkins described the phenomenon on the example of the culture of the United States. He said in the 19th century culture had no owner. Songs were exchanged between villages and folk ballads reused material from literary texts.

Professionalization and content reservation appeared with the culture industry. Singers became vocalists and that was because their songs were broadcast on radio and TV and played back from records.

The situation changed when personal computers appeared at home, enabling any user to edit sound, footage, text, mixing, remixing, sharing. Grassroots culture is coming back and the cultural industry is in danger.

Creatively developing all kinds of online productions is on the verge of legality. But perhaps it’s the notion of legality that’s out of tune with the real? Relationships between production and consumption are changing and we don’t know which way things are going to go.

Legislative solutions such as ACTA, which most Internet users protest, try to push the line so as to boost industrial producers’ profits, to protect and hedge around their roles.

But artists will go starving.

Artists themselves are searching for new and alternative distribution channels, independent of major corporations, as evidenced by the internet publications of performers such as Radiohead or the huge success of direct-selling music portals e.g. bandcamp.com.

ACTA has been all the talk over the last few days. The Anonymous group blocks Polish government websites. Popular sites blacken out their screens. Users create visuals. Portals write. The government comments. Were internet users aware of their power before?

If we’re talking about the narrow group that made all the fuss, the experienced software engineers and hackers who do political stuff after hours, about people who identity themselves with the free code movement – the answer is yes. Whoever they are, they know very well how to modify codes, how to navigate around the web. They’ve grown up on it. Now not only spending their free time online, but also learning and working.

The optimistic conclusion is that we have many talented programmers.

And the audience of this show? In the past you took to the street, today you can help by flooding sites to block them. Is this how an internet community is emerging?

It is emerging as opposition. The common factor is protest against restrictions that may affect their very lives, limit their participation in the world. In an extreme case, this could even turn into something like 1980 Solidarity. Social masses of different backgrounds gather under a single slogan because the political system has hit at the foundations of their life. Because for them it’s something absolutely elementary.

I analyse memes I find on my friends’ computers. A recent one was particularly on the spot. “The government steals your money” – and an indifferent face. “No prospects for a better tomorrow” – and a care-not face again. Finally, “Limited access to the web” – and the image of Arnold Schwarzenegger reloading a big gun.

Translated from the Polish by Marcin Wawrzyńczak

Piotr Cichock



Piotr Cichocki is a Polish Internet anthropologist at Warsaw University’s Institute of Ethnology. He is also a concert organizer, music producer and art promotor. He gives lectures on the "fusion of the modern men's identity with electronic media and popular culture".

European Council
The Don Quixotes of Brussels



At best, the measures adopted at the January 30 summit – the fiscal treaty and the economic growth plan – are meant, at best, to overcome the mistakes of the past year and a half, says columnist Xavier Vidal-Folch. At worst, they’re part of a recurring sham.
Xavier Vidal-Folch

“The leaders are spending a great deal of their time at their summits discussing how to get out of the mess they got into at the previous summit,” whispers one player high in the political echelons of the EU.

The inanity of the repetitive and circular conversations about Greece, Portugal or on the size of the bailout fund confirmed yesterday just how difficult it is to extract oneself from the mess. The politicians have been stuck in it at least since Merkel and Sarkozy released from its bottle the goblin of state bankruptcy (Deauville, October 19, 2010), lurking in the write-off for private creditors (i.e., the decline in the value of their bonds). The meeting did make two great contributions to the saga of recurring stubbornness: giving the green light to a sham “Fiscal Treaty” and endorsing a plan for economic growth that is not a plan. It’s a joke.

Or does it just look like one?

Let's suppose the new fiscal treaty is necessary to ensure the discipline of eurozone members and to design, or open the door to, the resulting “compensations” in favour of growth. Which is a lot to assume: the European Parliament has expressed “its doubts about the necessity” for the agreement (Resolution of January 18), and Wolfgang Munchau (in Monday’s Financial Times) endorses and amplifies those doubts: “The Treaty is unnecessary,” because its provisions are “either in existing treaties or in legislation” and because the excessive restrictions of those provisions “will encourage” recessionary policies.
Byzantine tweaks

Let's suppose the doubters are wrong and that the Treaty, with its pompous title “for Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union”, is worth something. Well, the text develops only the idea of “stability”, of budgetary discipline. The rest of the title is not mentioned in the actual text.

It has to be repeated ad nauseam that only Article 9 (of the 16) mandates “promoting economic growth.” And it requires that the signatories “take the actions and measures necessary” for that growth. But it specifies none. There is nothing that is actually obligatory. There are no fines for those who don’t take those actions and measures for growth. There are no threats to haul off to the Court of Luxembourg those who fall by the wayside.

And yet, in contrast to all that, the Treaty sets out very precisely the sanctions to be meted out to all who fail to follow the provisions for cutting deficits. In this asymmetry lies the joke: the package is being sold as a tool to drive the two poles of economic policy, yet only develops one.

But there's more. The fifth version of the text, the one that made it to the conference, is even more convoluted than the last. The [new] tweaks are essential not because they are Byzantine, but because their very Byzantineness reveals how the planners and drafters of the text have fallen ill: fighting illusory windmills – i.e., the most obscure routes for incurring deficits and circumventing the sanctions – like mad Don Quixotes.

For the good people who have not fallen ill, it is enough to point out that one of the obsessions of these tweaks is to empower any government to pursue a defaulting partner, if the Commission itself refrains from doing so.
Snake oil

And so the text probably is necessary, dear Wolfgang – but it will be useless. Because all the historical actions in this area that have marginalised or minimised the power of institutions – from the Lisbon agenda of 2000, to the revolts in Paris and Berlin in order to evade sanctions from Brussels for failing to hew to the Stability Pact in 2003 – have led to the place that nobody wants to think about: irrelevance.

The other false “snake oil” is the “Declaration” on reviving economic growth. The issue has worried the Franco-German couple – the last to find out that if GDP falls it will not be enough even to service the debts – since their bilateral get-together on January 9, the first time they proposed combining the sackcloth with vitamin shots.

The Berlin-Paris axis, and the Commission and Council have deployed two techniques of proven inefficiency for reviving economic growth. One is to shake out the drawers (as with the Lisbon Agenda) for a few beautiful ideas and scrapped plans: youth employment, and financing for SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises).

The other is to rake over the Community budget and reallocate items. The money left over, i.e. that has neither been spent nor returned to the governments, is chump change – about 30 million euros. And reorganising the 82 billion euros of the structural and cohesion funds not yet allocated for the two years (2012 and 2013) still remaining in the current Financial Perspectives septennial (i.e., in the 2007-2013 budget cycle) may be premature. In any case, it’s misleading, since those funds are already geared towards growth: roads, schools, water treatment plants. And following the “Luxembourg employment strategy” of 1997, not one cent is to be spent on projects that do not create jobs.

There is, therefore, not a single new euro. Just juggling games.

Translated from the Spanish by Anton Baer

Anonymous hacks into phone call between FBI and Scotland Yard
Investigators can be heard discussing joint inquiry into cybercrime in 15-minute call released on the internet


http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/03/anonymous-hacks-call-fbi-scotland-yard

An edited extract from the hacked phone call between the FBI and Scotland Yard.
Link to this video
Hackers from the group Anonymous have broadcast a private conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard exposing details of an international cybercrime investigation, the FBI has confirmed.

The FBI and Scotland Yard admitted that the security of the call had been breached.

Investigators can be heard discussing their joint inquiry into a cybercrime investigation going through the British courts, and linked to investigations in New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles and Ireland.

It is understood the breach occurred at the US end of the call. As the news broke, Anonymous began taunting the FBI, asking if it was curious about how the group could keep reading the bureau's internal communications.

Investigators can be heard on the broadcast talking about named individuals who have been charged in the UK with hacking into the website of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca).

In one lengthy exchange, the British contingent can be heard discussing a 15-year-old hacker as a "wannabe" and a "pain in the bum". The 15-minute call has been broadcast on the internet, but the names of some of the individuals being sought have been bleeped out by the hackers.

Scotland Yard said: "We are aware of the video which relates to an FBI conference call involving a PCeU [member of the e-crime unit] representative. The matter is being investigated by the FBI.

"At this stage no operational risks to the MPS have been identified; however, we continue to carry out a full assessment. We are not prepared to discuss [it] further."

The conference call was one that appears to be held weekly between officers from the Metropolitan police's e-crime unit and the FBI in New York and Los Angeles.

The law enforcement agencies are working together on a cybercrime investigation involving teenagers and young people from the UK, Ireland, Germany and the US, it is understood.

Six people are going through the British courts charged in connection with hacking into computers belonging to Soca. They include Ryan Cleary, a British teenager who is charged with five offences of hacking websites. Cleary, 19, from Wickford, Essex, was arrested in June last year. His arrest was linked to a series of cyber-attacks by a group called LulzSec.

Cleary was charged over cyber-attacks against British-based targets. He is due to appear at Southwark crown court with his co-accused, Jake Davis, on 11 May. Four other individuals, are due to appear at the same court in March as part of the same investigation. Cleary has been charged with three attacks – on the London-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in November 2010, the British Phonographic Industry in October 2010, and on Soca.

The method he is alleged to have used is a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against all three websites. He was also charged with constructing a botnet, a network of infected computers that can be used remotely to direct attacks.

On the intercepted call, the British police officers joke with their FBI counterparts early in the conversation while they wait for others to join, and are heard making fun of Sheffield - where the Acpo cybercrime conference is being held next week. "It's a khazi - not exactly a jewel in England's crown," says the British detective. The call, which took place nearly a fortnight ago – it is understood – includes a conversation about the appearance of Cleary and Davis at Southwark crown court last Friday.

The FBI official expresses his gratitude to the British officers for "being flexible" and co-ordinating with them. "New York appreciates it," the FBI operative says.

In response, the British detective says: "We have cocked things up in the past."

The British detective then gives the FBI details of a 15-year-old who was arrested in the UK before Christmas. He calls the 15-year-old a "wannabe" and is connected with two other teenagers who are known as CSL sec "Cant Stop Laughing Security".

"He is just a pain in the bum," the officer says. The call ends with all parties agreeing to talk again the following Monday.

The events leading to the arrest of Cleary involved an investigation by British police and the FBI. The bureau's involvement, plus the nature of the targets, raised the prospect of Washington seeking the teenager's extradition to the US.

The conference call reveals that two other individuals are to be arrested in the future. It makes clear that the investigation is complex, stretching across international boundaries and focusing on teenage hackers in many different cases.

Karen Todner, a lawyer for Cleary, said the recording could be "incredibly sensitive" and warned such data breaches had the potential to derail the police's work. If they haven't secured their email it could potentially prejudice the investigation," she told Associated Press.Anonymous is a collection of internet enthusiasts, pranksters and activists whose targets have included the Church of Scientology, the music industry, and financial companies such as Visa and MasterCard

Eurozone crisis
Iceland is our modern Utopia



In rejecting by referendum a bailout for their toxic banks and the repayment of external debt, the citzens of Iceland have shown it is possible to escape the laws of capitalism and take control of one's destiny, writes a Spanish historian.
Miguel Ángel Sanz Loroño

Since the times of Oscar Wilde it has been known that a map without the island of Utopia on it is a map “not worth even glancing at”. Despite that, the journey of Iceland from the darling of late capitalism to a project in true democracy suggests that a map without Utopia is not only unworthy of our attention, but is also a hoax conjured up by a defective cartography. Whether the markets like it or not, the lighthouse of Utopia has begun flashing faint warning signals to the rest of Europe.

Iceland is not Utopia. It is known that there can be no kingdoms of liberty within the Empire of necessity of late capitalism. But it is a recognition of a dramatic absence. Iceland is proof that capital does not own all the truth there is to this world, even when it aspires to control all the maps we can lay out.

With its decision to halt the wheel of tragedy of the markets, Iceland has set a precedent that could threaten to break the back of late capitalism. For now, this small island, which is doing what was claimed to be too unreal to be possible, does not seem to be sinking into chaos, though it does seem to be sinking into an information blackout. How much information are we getting from Iceland and how much on the loans to Greece? Why has Iceland gone off the pages of some of the media that should be telling us what is happening out there in the world?
A constitution drafted by citizen assemblies

So far it has been the birthright of those in power to define what is real and what is not, what can be thought and done and what can not. The cognitive maps deployed in order to understand our world have always had obscure corners where lies the barbarism that upholds the dominions of the elites. Those unmapped shadows of the world usually go with the elimination of their opposite, the island of Utopia. Walter Benjamin has already put it in writing: There is no document of civilisation that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

These elites, aided by theologians and economists, have been defining what is real and what is not: what is realistic, according to this definition of reality, and what is not and therefore an aberration of thought that cannot be taken into account. That is, what can be done and thought and what can not. But they have done it, in accordance with the basis of power and its violence: the dreaded concept of necessity. One must make sacrifices, they say with a stricken gesture. Either adapt, or face the unimaginable catastrophe. Late capitalism has exposed its logic in a perversely Hegelian way: all that is real is necessarily rational, and vice versa.

In January 2009, the Icelandic people rebelled against the arbitrariness of this logic. The peaceful demonstrations of the crowd brought down the Conservative cabinet of Geir Haarde, and running the country fell to a left-leaning parliamentary minority, which called elections for April 2009. The Social Democratic Alliance of Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir and the Left-Green Movement renewed their coalition government with an absolute majority. In autumn 2009, by a popular initiative, a Constitution began to be drafted by citizen assemblies. In 2010, the Government proposed creating a national constitutional council whose members would be chosen by lot. Two referenda (the second in April 2011) refused to rescue the banks and pay the foreign debt. In September 2011 the former Prime Minister, Geir Haarde, was put on trial for his role in the crisis.
Every map of Europe should have Iceland at its vanishing point

To forget that the world is not a Greek tragedy in which the wheel of fate or of capital turns without regard to human reason is to deny reality. It is obvious that the wheel is moved by human beings. All that we can imagine being possible is as real as what the markets tell us is the reality. A sense of possibilities and the human imagination itself, recovered in Iceland, teach us that they are as true and real as the gargantuan necessity of capitalism. We just have to heed this call to discover the trap that is trying to make us believe in that necessity. There is no alternative, they declare. Perhaps some of those announcing sacrifices to us have bothered to check their map of the world?

Iceland has shown that our cartography contains more than they are telling us. That it is possible to dominate – and therein lies the principle of freedom – that ‘necessity’. Iceland, however, is not a model. It is one of the possibilities for doing things differently. The intent of the crowds in Iceland to build the future with their decisions and their imagination shows us the reality of an alternative. Because the possibility of doing things differently as proclaimed by the crowd is as real as the need to carry on doing things the same way that is demanded by capital. In Iceland they have decided not to let the shape of tomorrow be dictated by the tragic wheel of necessity. Will the rest of us continue permitting what is real to be defined by capital? Will we continue to surrender the future, the realm of the possible, and our imaginations to the banks, the corporations and governments that claim to be doing everything that can possibly be done?

Every map of Europe should have Iceland at its vanishing point. This map must be constructed with the certainty that what is possible is built into the real just as deeply as is the necessary. The necessity is just one more possibility of what is real. There is an alternative. Iceland has reminded us of it by proclaiming that the imagination is part of humane reasoning. It is the crowd that will define what is real and realistic, using the possibility of doing things differently. This way, we are not cheering ourselves on with the consolations of dreamers, but are settling on a part of reality that the map of capital wants to wipe out completely. The existence of Utopia depends on it. And with this, the concept of a life worth living.

Translated from the Spanish by Anton Baer

The Queen's diamond jubilee celebrated with gun salute –

At midday on Monday the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery fired a 41-gun royal salute in London's Hyde Park to mark the start of the diamond jubilee, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Queen's ascension to the throne. At 1pm the Honourable Artillery Company fired a 62-gun salute at the Tower of London


Queen Elizabeth has never been drawn from her required position of non-partisanship.

One law the Queen must have enjoyed signing was that banning age discrimination. Had she needed to apply for her job back when she was just 25, the selectors might have balked at her age. Sixty years on, she has played a blinder. On any showing, the Queen's jubilee can be celebrated for longevity and dedication to duty, in the face of often insufferable tedium. In her mid-80s, she glides over the stream of events, a tribute to the octogenarian work ethic.

Britain has never had much trouble with hereditary monarchs, even when delivered total duds. The reason is that, at least since the Hanoverians, personality has not mattered. The monarch may be a human being, but only as a ghost in a constitutional machine. No one would have invented heredity as a basis for headship of state, except possibly as a way of avoiding argument. But where it exists and serves its purpose, there seems no good reason for disposing of it. The monarch does not rule in any meaningful sense, she just represents. There is no great problem.

Monarchy's very few upsets over the past two centuries may have distressed the public and, as such, caused a flutter in Republican dovecotes. The eccentric behaviour of George IV came at a time of great political turbulence. The marriage of Edward VIII produced a crisis and abdication. Monarchy survived both. The chief hiccup of the Queen's reign came with the death of Princess Diana and was caused by a simple misreading of the nature of celebrity. It gave Republicanism only the briefest run for its money.

Otherwise, the Queen has rarely striven to win hearts and minds, which comes with the consequent risk of losing them. She has simply and studiously done her job. In over half a century, no historian or commentator has caught her out in the requirement for non-partisanship, even when she must have been sorely tried. She has been consulted, she has advised and warned, but few have detected the consequence. Her only known fixation (other than with aircraft noise over Windsor) is with the Commonwealth – a harmless enough pastime.

The Queen was hardly alone in finding Margaret Thatcher difficult to be with, and Tony and Cherie Blair an odd couple. She allegedly blinked last week when asked to approve the crude political opportunism of David Cameron's stripping of Fred Goodwin's knighthood, probably noting the precedent it set. But she signed.

More delicate has been the Queen's orchestration of the image of monarchy. Her personal discretion has been phenomenal. There has been never so much as an interview, and the only ruthlessness has been that shown to those who breached her secrecy. The royal household must be the tightest ship of state on earth.

More trouble has resulted from the one mistake of the reign: the decision to allow the making of the Royal Family documentary in 1969. Immensely popular, it humanised and demystified the monarch, but it pushed her family into deliberate prominence. Monarchy strayed beyond the person of the monarch to embrace a group of individuals, each vulnerable to celebrity, easy to satirise and later to deride for his or her failings. When three marriages disintegrated in 1992, it led to what the Queen described as her "annus horribilis". Monarchy could no longer be isolated from human frailty. It acquired personality, which meant that mishaps tarnished it, as during the Diana crisis of 1997.

The monarchy survived. It is not a family any more than it is a person. It has to stand as a sanitised, anthropomorphic political institution. What is remarkable today is that at its core remains a stolidly upright woman with a mildly sardonic smile, hard-working and apparently indestructible. Things on all sides being what they are, it is hard to avoid the triteness of long live the Queen.

The Merkozys, Europe's odd couple, announce their political engagement


When Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel met for a joint cabinet session, all that was missing was the ring




Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel at the Elysée. Photograph: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images
To a chorus of clicking cameras, and the occasional giggle, their eyes met across a room crowded with journalists and ministers from both sides of the Rhine.

The couple seemed slightly self-conscious as they spoke of their happy "engagement", of pride in their union, of their mutual admiration, even of families, of jealousy and how they were now as one.

She used the German equivalent of the royal "we" (as in, "we agree" and, "we are working hand in hand"); he said "Madame Merkel and I", several times, insisting he was "speaking for us both".

She invited him to visit her parliament; he took her for lunch in his palace. Later, they would give their first joint television interview.

All that was missing was the ring.

It may not be true love, but Europe's oddest couple – the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, nicknamed the Merkozys – were, in the words of the Gallic suitor, "getting on better and better".

The political marriage is especially convenient for Sarkozy, with just 80 days to go to a presidential election that he is currently on track to lose – if and when he announces he is a candidate, which he was at pains to point out he had not, yet.

Merkel has made it clear that if and when Sarkozy does decide to stand for a second term in office, she will actively campaign on his behalf.

This, she explained, was perfectly "normal". "We are from the same political family," she said. "In the legislative elections in May 2009, he came to Berlin to give me his support. I don't see where is the problem."

Asked – twice – about the presidential frontrunner, François Hollande, Merkel made it clear he was just not her type.

Sarkozy declared himself "very happy", but said this was more than just a matter of personal feelings or even of amour-propre.

"When she speaks, she speaks for the whole of Germany, not just those of the left or the right; and it is the same when I speak: I speak for France. People who don't understand this don't know us very well: our countries are more important than we are."

He was, he added, "happy and proud" that after all that had "happened between Germany and France", he and the chancellor were getting on so well and "speaking with the same voice".

"We are friends; we are allies; we understand each other better and better," he said.

Top of the agenda at Monday's joint cabinet session between the pair and a retinue of government ministers, was the eurozone debt crisis and the continuing bloodshed in Syria. But with polls reportedly showing that around 82% of the French approve of close ties with Germany, Sarkozy is hoping Merkel's support will be a vote-winner.

The Elysée spokesman Franck Louvrier told Le Figaro the interview would demonstrate the solidity of the German leader's relationship with Sarkozy when French people understood that "the destiny of France and that of Germany are linked".

The Germans criticised Merkel for being too close to him, and the French criticised him for being too close to her, Sarkozy said, "so I suspect we've got the right balance".

At one point, Sarkozy seemed ready to launch into a list of all the things he admired about his German partner: her confidence, her ability to compromise, her comparatively low unemployment rate. He spoke of the time they had sat up all night discussing the eurozone crisis. "I admire Madame Merkel. She runs her country well," he added. "But we don't want to be jealous. We want to be inspired.

"Good for them if their unemployment is dropping," he muttered, with just a hint of jealousy.

Mrs Merkel nodded: "I agree completely. We agree with each other."

The Merkozys may be "personally engaged", to the mutual political interest of both, but there is unlikely to be a honeymoon in the near future.

Greece was certainly out: the European ally had to remember it had responsibilities as well as rights, said Mr Sarkozy sternly, again insisting he was speaking for both of them; Italy was a possibility since Rome's handling of its economic woes had been "spectacular", he added.

In any case, the Merkozys will always have Paris

FRENCH film-makers are good at turning out silly comedies that foreigners find unwatchable. They have a better export record with highbrow, low-plot movies, set in chic apartments with parquet floors, that feel moodily French. Just occasionally, however, they come up with a comic gem. “Intouchables”, directed by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, is one of those cleverly pitched, well-scripted, feel-good comic films typically crafted in Hollywood; it is a delight to see that the French can sometimes pull them off too. With more than 4m tickets sold since it opened earlier this month, the film is set to be a boxoffice smash.

http://www.economist.com/node/21538663

EL PAIS
he first edition of this newspaper was published a few months after the death of the military dictator Francisco Franco. It is seen as the first paper to show commitment to a democratic society, while the other papers first had to try and come to terms with their past under the dictatorship. In the times of insecurity during the military putsch of 23 February 1981 El País ran a special edition in which it clearly declared its support for democracy.

El País - Spain | Friday, February 10, 2012
Judge Garzón deliberately sidelined

The internationally renowned Spanish judge was barred from office for eleven years by the Supreme Court in Madrid on Thursday. The left-liberal daily El País criticises the judgement according to which Garzón was guilty of authorising illegal recording of the conversations of defence lawyers with their clients: "The eleven-year disbarment for perversion of justice ends the career of a judge who has performed great services to society in the fight against terrorism, drug trafficking and organised crime. … Garzón's conduct can be justified by the fact that he acted to prevent the crimes of a criminal organisation with ample means to disobey the law, including the complicity of well-paid lawyers. But instead the most foolish, absurd and even insulting argument prevailed: Garzón tried to foil the 'defence's strategies' to the point of lowering the 'Spanish penal process to the levels of a totalitarian system'. With this argument the desired effect was achieved: to put Garzón out of the running as a judge."

Debate
Europe will be saved by nations



With their refusal to build a federal Europe around the single currency, politicians have surrendered power to the economy. To win back this power and to share it with citizens, a Polish historian argues that they should construct a federation of nations.
Marek Beylin

As Jacques Delors, one of the initiators of the common currency in the 1990s, remarked, a united Europe is a UPO (an unidentified political object). At the time Delors was a describing a Europe that was uncertain about which path to take towards integration: unification of markets, or the construction of a political union to pave the way for a future federation. Our current situation has resulted from the choice made by the Union in response to these considerations.

Europe opted for the market, which it assumed would provide a satisfactory form of integration. In other words, we allowed ourselves to be beguiled by the illusion that the common market would take charge of a task that Europe’s politicians were not ready to carry out, and create a political union through the establishment of economic links.

With this in mind, we chose not to establish strong political institutions. Not surprisingly, once the crisis struck, the union turned out to be very vulnerable politically. At the same time, the markets, which were supposed to favour its integration, began to trample it into the ground.
Widening divide between strong and weak countries

The privileging of the market over politics has become an Achilles heel for the EU that has prevented it from effectively responding to the crisis, and even more importantly from planning its future. After all, is politics not a means to take control of the future? Today, we have no hopeful vision for the future of Europe, but we should bear in mind that this state of affairs has not been caused by the crisis.

The EU has always had a tendency to avoid the issue of its own transformation. In the pre-crisis era, there was no reason to interfere with a mechanism that was more or less working, especially when European stability was sustained by economic growth. We had the impression that time had stopped and was under our control. There was no need to plan for the future because it was going to be a simple extension of the present.

However, concluding that everything is under control is often the first step to becoming a victim. This is one of the more well-known lessons of history, but one that has still not been assimilated by European leaders especially in the light of the union’s response to the crisis, which increasingly appears to be a recipe for political catastrophe.

The union only offers slow responses to immediate problems, and is careful to avoid taking the initiative in its bid to show that for Europe’s main leaders it remains a single entity. However, today this effort is increasingly strained by a widening divide between strong and weak countries and the EU’s centre and periphery.
European Union no longer offers the guarantee of a decent stable existence

Of course, the politicians have no desire to see the EU break up. They know only too well that this would be a disaster for civilisation. But they have not succeeded in setting aside a mode of action that they themselves believe to be outdated. Of course, they say they want to calm the markets, but without changing any underlying mechanisms so that once the crisis has been allayed the markets will once again take charge of politics and political integration.

The major problem in our European societies is the decline of government by political leaders, which has created a power vacuum. Our democracy is dispersed and atomised to the point where political leaders have trouble deciphering the aspirations of citizens, which are also chaotic and atomised. As a result, it is increasingly difficult to determine clear objectives for a community of citizens.

While the sense of dislocation between leaders and citizens has continued to grow, the power that has been abandoned by politicians has not found its way back into the hands of citizens. The union is a clear expression of this trend: not only has it lost its existing objectives, and thus become a land without a future, but worse still, for many of its citizens it has become the land of broken promises.

With the dramatic increase in unemployment and in particular unemployment among young people, the European Union no longer offers the guarantee of a decent stable existence. The European welfare state, one of the pillars of traditional democracy is progressively – and in some cases rapidly – being dismantled.
Restoring democracy in the union

Amid the anger prompted by growing inequality, poverty and plunging living standards have been observed in societies that were hitherto largely spared by the crisis.

Today we are faced with a complete lack of ideas on how to emerge from this chaos unscathed. In such a situation, returning to our roots – and in this case, that means the roots of the European Union – is the best policy. The political project that was initially supposed to unite the continent was a united Europe in the form of a federation of nations: one that was created both by nations and plans for the future, as philosopher Marcel Gauchet has pointed out.

What we have to do now is to construct that federation of nations. Such a structure would entrust significant powers under the supervision of nations to the EU. A major reversal of the relationships with the Union, which is no longer under the democratic control of peoples, is essential. United Europe was built on the will of peoples, but it has turned away from that will, and it has no hope of survival without it.

The challenge we face is not only one of restoring economic growth, but also, and more importantly one of restoring democracy in the union. It is a challenge that can only be addressed by the citizens of Europe. For this to happen, the citizens of Europe will have to be convinced that such an undertaking is worthwhile and that their efforts will be rewarded by fairer policies and a brighter future.