EU’s Fate After Paris: A Dark Scenario - by Daniel Stelte

The EU: United we stand divided  we will fail

The terrorist attacks from Paris, inhuman and brutal, serve as an accelerant for already ongoing processes that have been weakening the European Union’s bonds.

Now they combine in a dangerous mixture and react with each other:

• The “third world war”, as labeled by the pope, with radical Islam, which is intensifying for years and in which peaceful solution seems more and more utopian.
• The wave of refugees flowing into Europe, trying to escape war, suppression and poverty.
• A depressing lack of cultural will for self-defense of the West, serving like an invitation to intolerant people to become even more intolerant.
• A European Union that shows more and more that it is not build on shared values but on the generation of economic gains and prosperity. Once Union stops being financially beneficial politicians come under pressure to explain the benefits to their national electorates.
• European governments not sticking to agreements and rules. Declaring themselves incapable of returning to the order of law.
• Governments and private sectors having lived beyond their financial means for years, unable to deal with the hefty debt load and unfunded promises for retirement and health care of an aging society.
• European leaders who have instead of addressing these issues and the ongoing Euro crisis heads on have played for time – without making use of this time.

All of this – and the list is not complete – is now mixing and reinforcing each other.

Note EU-Digest:  Only unity in purpose and joint European action can overcome the dangers that lie ahead.  If the EU breaks up the enemy, which is not only terrorism as such, but also corporate greed and manipulation, will slowly but surely pick away and destroy democracy and liberty individually in each European state without mercy. The EU is worth fighting for !

Read more: EU’s Fate After Paris: A Dark Scenario - The Globalist

Dutch love democracy, dislike politics - by Graeme Kidd

Roughly 93 percent of the Netherlands thinks that democracy is the best possible form of government, and 95 percent think it is important to live in a democratically governed nation, a new survey from the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP) revealed. Released on Friday, the report also found that 73 percent of people living in the country have a negative view of politics there.

“The main reasons put forward for dissatisfaction were that politicians do not listen and simply do what they want, that citizens have too little say and that politicians talk too much and act too little; or else they were dissatisfied with current policy at the time of the survey,” the research noted. Citizens are wanting to have a greater say through more public debate and the collection of public opinion information about democracy itself.

The SCP quoted one 30-year-old man as saying, “Generally Democracy as a state form works well, it is unfortunately the politicians that make a mess of it.”

Some 22 percent support more direct democracy where people vote on many referenda as oppose to representative politics, with 45 percent wanting to vote on a selection of referenda chosen by elected representatives. “This would seem to suggest that at least a proportion of the Dutch public see direct democracy mainly as a way of adding to or improving representative democracy rather than as an alternative to it,” the report noted.

The research was carried out by Dr. Diana den Ridder and Prof. Paul Dekker, and published under the title, “More Democracy, Less Politics?” The report was commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relation to gauge the perception of the Dutch public into democracy and politics.

They also found that while people in the Netherlands deeply value equal treatment by the courts, opinion is divided about whether or not that exists. At the same time, 90 percent value both a free press and freedom to oppose government, with 70 percent saying they are satisfied with both.

Read more: Dutch love democracy, dislike politics - NL Times

Britain: Democracy v Psychology: why do people keep electing idiots ? - by Dean Burnett

The British 2015 election campaigns are under way, and it’s clear that doing or saying unintelligent things is no barrier to political success. Unfortunately, there are several psychological mechanisms that lead to apparent idiots being elected into powerful positions. 

Read more: Democracy v Psychology: why people keep electing idiots | Dean Burnett | Science | The Guardian