The original concept of supranational democracy for Europe brought long-lasting peace to the Continent. EU's founder Robert Schuman described democracy as being in the service of the people and acting in agreement with the people. What's going on today? See also www.schuman.info and http://democracy.blogactiv.eu .
A number of major TV companies have called the US elections as a victory for Joe Biden. However something smells foul. These companies are the media of the Washington Swamp that President Donald Trump has called Fake News. He has told them why in no uncertain terms. They are not his friends.
Other media do not support this conclusion. They are the independent. The cartel operations like Google, Facebook and Twitter have tried to censor or block them completely.
Why? They point to the frauds that have taken place — which the main stream media have failed for some reason to investigate. Nor have these Big Tech cartel companies investigated in the last three weeks of the election the ‘Biden Laptop from Hell‘ and other ‘Biden crime family’ scandals. Real journalists have exposed their vast, multibillion dollar crime, corruption, drugs, pornography and worse in the USA and around the world.
Citizens should also remind the hysterical main stream media that the media is not the institution that decides.
In June President Trump said there were millions of fake ballot papers being printed that would compromise the results in November.
Does anyone seriously think that Donald Trump did nothing about it? When he was annoyed about a member of his White House staff leaking information to the press, he passed wrong info to some suspects. When it appeared in the NYT etc, he knew who the leaker was. The guilty got the boot.
What has happened on 3 November and later?
1. Unusual voting trends
Graphs give the total number of votes as that accumulate over the day. It rises in a curve until the end of the day. When you add votes from constituencies there is no way that all the votes are without exception for one candidate. This happened.
2. Here are two examples
3. Tammany Hall The most important person is not the counter but the person who controls the counting. In 1870s New York 'Boss' Tweed ran one of the most corrupt political setups that made him a rich man, as well as his party pals, the 'Tweed Ring'.
4. Blockchain coding What did Trump do about the fake bulletins he knew about in June? The most logical thing to do would be to place a secret blockchain code or watermark on authentic paper. Ballots have several layers of coding on them apparently and I would suppose at least one that is not known to the political parties involved. That way in a recount with the right equipment or in Court the real votes can be separated from the fake. The origin of the fakes would also point to the guilty and they could be pointed to the nearest gaol.
What would happen to ballots that have been destroyed, buried and confiscated? A serial system of coding would reveal any ballots that were missing. Any other ideas?
5. Outcome.
We are likely to see some interesting Court cases and Hearings in Congress. Will the main stream media give it full billing?
Are you being manipulated by Google? Are they playing tricks on you so you become their commercial and political puppet? How can you tell?
One analyst found that:
‘Google maintains nine different blacklists to suppress information worldwide. We are all aware that Google deletes or blocks access to videos on YouTube, which it owns, but few people are aware that Google blocks access to millions of websites. On January 31, 2009, Google blocked access to virtually the entire internet for 40 minutes.’
You can test whether Google and Twitter are impartial. Here’s how using a simple technique below.
Global manipulation (c) Bron
Question: When you make a search, does Google really show which articles most accurately reflect the search question? Or do some human manipulators fiddle the results?
Remember that Google and Twitter have every motive to cheat. They sell advertising. They want you to buy things.
For example the Pharmaceutical sector spends hundreds and millions of dollars lobbying the US Congress. They oppose efforts to reduce prices. Critics of their products, pills and vaccines get stifled. What are you prevented from learning about the ‘Covid-19 pandemic‘? President Trump says that Big Pharma are ‘getting away with murder‘. How do they use Google to their advantage?
And Google may want you to vote for certain parties, and discourage others. Political parties get huge contributions from industries, trade unions and NGOs. All are active on the Net. Does Google load the dice so the results you get are altered in their favour of parties?
Worse, the big Info Tech companies sell your personal data — they know your intimate secrets. They can often predict what you can do — sometimes more than you can.
That means you are manipulated.
Public frauded
Google, compared to other search engines, does not give the public what is the true result. In the run-up to the US elections, conservatives complain of a bias.
You want impartial searches? Don’t go to Google. In the run-up to the US elections in November, search for these supporters online and you will often find the results are biased in favour of critics rather than the original source.
The result? The main Info-Tech companies make citizens who want to read the original source feel like they are someone with a minority viewpoint.
Is this a gripe or a fact? A senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Psychology and Technology studied the phenomenon in detail. Dr Robert Epstein testified to the US Senate Judiciary Committee. Here’s what he said:
In 2016, biased search results generated by Google’s search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that gave at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton (whom I supported). I know this because I preserved more than 13,000 election-related searches conducted by a diverse group of Americans on Google, Bing, and Yahoo in the weeks leading up to the election, and Google search results – which dominate search in the U.S. and worldwide – were significantly biased in favor of Secretary Clinton in all 10 positions on the first page of search results in both blue states and red states.
Dr Epstein says that this Search Engine Manipulation Effect of the Google algorithm is used not only in USA but in other countries as well to manipulate elections.
Both the US and EU authorities should ask Dr Epstein for access to his database of searches over the last four years. They will show the dirty underworkings of western politics. If they are made public then all citizens can judge for themselves.
Dr Epstein outlined the results of his investigation:
I know the number of votes that shifted because I have conducted dozens of controlled experiments in the U.S. and other countries that measure precisely how opinions and votes shift when search results favor one candidate, cause, or company. I call this shift “SEME” – the Search Engine Manipulation Effect. My first scientific paper on SEME was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in 2015 (https://is.gd/p0li8V) (Epstein & Robertson, 2015a) and has since been accessed or downloaded from PNAS’s website more than 200,000 times. SEME has also been replicated by a research team at one of the Max Planck Institutes in Germany.
Dr Epstein calls this manipulation one of the most powerful means to control subliminally the democratic essentials of society.
SEME is one of the most powerful forms of influence ever discovered in the behavioral sciences, and it is especially dangerous because it is invisible to people – “subliminal,” in effect. It leaves people thinking they have made up their own minds, which is very much an illusion. It also leaves no paper trail for authorities to trace. Worse still, the very few people who can detect bias in search results shift even farther in the direction of the bias, so merely being able to see the bias doesn’t protect you from it. Bottom line: biased search results can easily produce shifts in the opinions and voting preference of undecided voters by 20 percent or more – up to 80 percent in some demographic groups.
Democracy is at stake. The EU needs to act immediately. This type of manipulation is an entirely different and more dangerous dimension from the present line of EU investigation at StratCom, disinformation and advertising.
Robert Schuman and the co-signatories of the European Community system provided a system where impartial information could be presented to the public for use in their decision-making. This requires that the Consultative Committees be elected on a Europe-wide scale by European associations representing all elements of organised civil society. Whether in the European Coal and Steel Community or the European Health Community access to valid information was to be guaranteed by the Human Rights Convention of the Council of Europe.
In the Gaullist period into the 1960s the Council blocked this. Access to impartial information was feared both by ultra-nationalists and euroCommunist federalists like Spinelli, who knew it would destroy their malign ideology.
It is now more urgent than ever that European peoples and its leaders implement this measure.
Human intervention
We are a pawn in the Google version of Big Brother — unless we take precautions. That trap includes not only a biased algorithm. It includes some human being fiddling with the results for partisan purpose.
The Info Tech giants are making a financial, economic or political gain out of this.
The Info Tech giants are already the biggest companies in the world with combined $5 Trillion turnover. They are not manipulating the results for small time users. Their main customers are global giants too.
The results may be fiddled to provide an ideological bias so the public will eventually be ‘educated’ according to the manipulator.
Arabs, Jews, Oil, Russians, EU, Blackmail
How would Google and Twitter react to an article covering all the above terms, all somewhat controversial to some sections of the public? On 6 July I published an article dealing with disinformation, Fake News, covering these topics.
I also tweeted about the topic and left a link at eurdemocracy.com
On the morning after I checked public reaction by asking Google for search results of the article. On Google I used a three word search <> the most prominent in the title of the article.
Google put my article in first position on the first page on the morning after. But when I checked that evening it was nowhere to be seen on the first six pages. It had disappeared from sight! What I got was a long list of articles about how Israel is blackmailing Palestinians!
The search result was the same with or without the hyphen. Zero links.
The Alternatives search engines
I checked:
Duckduckgo,com.
It came up first on the first page. (even with the hyphen)
Bing.com
It came first on first page (with the hyphen)
Dogpile.com (which uses Google and other search engines) With the hyphen there was not even a reply. I dropped the hyphen and it came up first on first page.
Yahoo search. It said nothing of this description available please check your spellingetc. So I dropped the hyphen and the article came up on first page second article.
Google’s political dealings
Google and Yahoo both use human modified search engines algorithms to give a particular bias. This seems to involve exclusions as well as skewed results. The Google COE billionaire Eric Schmidt contributed to and worked for the Hillary Clinton campaign. He was a frequent visitor to the Obama White House and known as ‘Obama’s chief corporate ally.‘ Google and associates had ‘at least 427 meetings‘ with the Obama White House.
Schmidt resigned from Google in 2017 when Mrs Clinton did not get elected. That failure happened in spite of what the Epstein study of search engine manipulation concluded that Google skewed search results delivering around 2.6 million extra votes among ‘undecideds’ in the Clinton Democrat direction at the election. Dr Epstein testified that to Congress and he said he was a Democrat voter.
Continuing Google Saga
At this time by the next Friday my article was confirmed on Bing and other search engines as still top of their first pages with the 3 terms.
On Google its was nowhere to be seen.
On Saturday evening 11 July, I found that my article was still rated 1st or second on the main search engines. Then, surprise surprise, I found my article suddenly appeared first on page oneof Google search.
Does the weekend imply change of staff supervisors at Google?
But by Sunday it had disappeared from Google‘s first 7 pages. How do they explain this on-off censorship of what is supposedly an impartial search engine?
I was then running second on Duckduckgo and Yahoo and first on Bing.
Nothing on Google except pages about how Israel blackmails the PLO /Palestinians.
Twitter block
When I first published my post, I also sent out a Tweet. But when I checked the link to eurdomocracy.com it did not work. So I had to change the link to another site at blogactiv.eu .
I asked my online hosting service why, when I included a link to eurdemocracy.com in a Twitter message, it did not work. It was refused. I had to delete the tweet and use the blogactiv.eu backup copy of the article as the link source.
The help desk suggested it was the usual censorship by the hi tech industry.
Here’s what they wrote:
Thank you for contacting our support department. When I insert ‘eurdemocracy.com‘ in a browser, it does redirect to destination url
However, this isn’t to say that private platforms such as Facebook can decide to block any website they wish to, in which there are many examples of them doing so, as well as updating their terms of service several times over the years without warning. We are not sure why Facebook would block a redirect, but they use so many unknown factors on what they allow, that we don’t have any way to know exactly what the issue is.
Solution to cartel Information control
The public deserves a better service. After all, it is the public not the big cartel companies that is paying for the service.
Dr Epstein provides one solution against information cartel control:
The solution to The Google Problem is to declare Google’s massive search index – the database the company uses to generate search results – to be a public commons, accessible by all, just as a 1956 consent decree forced AT&T to share all its patents. There is precedent in both law and in Google’s own business practices to justify taking this step.
He says that declaring Google’s index a commons will quickly give to real competition in the information market place and the means to understand what is manipulated and what is not.
A key aspect of Schuman’s design was to provide Europe with a democratic defence of the powerless against the powerful. The Community was provided with anti-cartel machinery. It should use them on the most vital sectors against Info Tech control of information.
Trillions of euros have been lost to the European economy because companies are badly structured. They take their constitution from ideas current decades if not centuries ago. They are encumbered with antiquated tax structures, which develop like some mutating monster by adding more and more complex annexes and qualifications to an already complex Tax Code. They are unfit for a Single Market of 500 million consumers
No wonder Europe is in a Employment crisis. Young highly educated people are waiting to find jobs. But employers are saying No Thanks -- not with today's complex and disadvantageous environment!
Many Europeans think they need a doctorate before they can start work! RUBBISH! Many of the world's greatest entrepreneurs never finished their first degree because they had a hot idea and wanted to create a company.
Is it because Europeans lack garages where a lot of multi-billion American firms like Microsoft saw the first light of day?
At the root of many of Europe's economic woes is the COMPANY STRUCTURE. What young 19-year old would want to start a company today? It's a nightmare to avoid at all cost! It is a jungle of local, national law and European Regulations, tying any foolhardly inventor or entrepreneur in masses of red tape, legal obligations and potential debt.
In Europe the complex system has become the greatest DISINCENTIVE to economic success!
Who should decide on the structure of companies? How should commercial companies be set up to take advantage of the European Single Market and globalization? How can they do it legally and SIMPLY?
What's more pertinent,
who should be deciding how companies are structured?
how they run their affairs?
under what conditions should they move their operations from one Member State to Member State?
What about public companies or utilities? Should they be allowed to compete with commercial companies? Don't they have an unfair advantage?
Who decides? Should such issues be decided by bureaucrats? Is it really the business of officials who may have had no experience in running a company? Should they be decided by politicians? They may be considered to be representatives of the people but don't they have their own interests? Members of the European Parliament admit that corruption is widespread and hardly controllable. Isn't it a danger that they will shift the balance into their favour and make sure they have extra influence if not contributions for their depleted party funds?
Wouldn't it be better to collect all the experience of young entrepreneurs and ask them how they would wish to have their first company?
Surely three most obvious deciding groups have nothing to do with politicians or bureaucrats. They are:
the entrepreneurs who have to pay and invest then employ people
the consumers who buy goods and services and may have recommendations and complaints about what they are served
the workers for the companies who may find themselves pressed between capitalists who want to cut their wages and consumers who also want the cheapest goods possible.
So what do we get? The Commission does not refer to the Consultative Committee -- the parliament for industry and social issues -- but asks creates a questionnaire for all and sundry. This has no real legal standing. Even if the majority of people who had the time to reply came up with good ideas, there would be no guarantee that the Commission or the Council would make it their choice for a Regulation. They will decide what is to their advantage. Is that a hard cynical comment? Unfortunately it is based on fact because the first proposals for a European Company were made in 1949 in the Council of Europe and the governments have consistently refused to implement any thing that does not conform to the creaking tax-system that few citizens understand.
This week the European Commission closed what it calls a consultation on the Future of European Company Law (below). Notice how the questions force people to concur with what is a failed politiburo system. The very formulation of the questions show that the Commission is not thinking in terms of European democracy -- supranational institutions -- but in reinforcing the Politburo thinking of deals between Commission and Council with a fig-leaf of consultation from the 'public' -- whoever they are.
The following are my replies in bold to their questions.
I Identity Questions 1 to 4.
II. Objectives of European company law
Question 5. What should be the objective(s) of EU company law ?* (compulsory)
Improve the environment in which European companies operate, and their mobility in the EU.
Facilitate the creation of companies in Europe.
Setting the right framework for regulatory competition allowing for a high level of flexibility and choice.
Better protect employees.
Better protect creditors, shareholders and members. Other.
No opinion.
Please specify
Since the 1950s European political leaders have failed to create a truly European company with simplified tax structures that might be headquartered in any Member State and receive favourable conditions for a fair and useful contribution to the European and world economy. There is also a notable failure to elect Consultative Committees (such as the Economic and Social Committee) based on the registration of all European professional associations. DEMOCRATIC ELECTION should prioritize EU action.
III. Scope of European company law
The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union provides the legal basis to adopt Directives harmonising EU company law (Article 50). That legal basis has been used for the adoption of Directives related to the disclosure of companies and their branches as well as the validity of their obligations and their nullity; the maintenance and alteration of the capital of public limited-liability companies; the merger and divisions of public limited-liability companies; and the single-member private limited-liability companies. It has also been used to adopt Directives concerning take-over bids, cross-border merger of companies and certain rights of shareholders of listed companies.
6. Would you support that the EU's priority should be to improve the existing harmonised legal framework or, rather, to explore new areas for harmonisation? * (compulsory)
Yes, the following pieces of existing legislation harmonising company law could be modernised further.
Yes, new areas could be explored for further harmonisation, such as...
Yes, both approaches could be combined and further work could target.
No, further harmonisation is not needed, the approach should rather be based on:
No opinion.
Please specify* (compulsory)
Soft-law instruments, like Recommendations.
Increased administrative co-operation and exchange of good practices. Other.
Please specify The Consultative Committees are required (1) to register all entrepreneur associations, all workers' associations and all consumer associations (Not done in 60 years) (2) Eliminate any lobby associations and establish professional criteria (3) Arrange elections to the seats in the CC such as the EESC and CoR. The Council refused to support this. It chose to select its own candidates (as it had for the EP). Schuman and Reuter (who wrote much of treaties) condemned this manipulation as 'ILLEGAL'
EU company law has been built on the basis of the distinction between public and private limited-liability companies. While some EU Directives apply to all company law forms, others focus on one type of company or the other. However, the reality has changed in the last years in particular to confer appropriate protection to public shareholders. A trend in some Member States is that public limited-liability companies are often used as legal form for listed companies while other large and medium-sized companies are private limited-liability companies. New hybrid company law forms have been designed in some Member States to grant further flexibility. Furthermore, the public-private distinction does not exist in all Member States.
7. Should the focus of EU company law move away from the distinction between public/private towards listed/unlisted in order to ensure adequate protection to shareholders? * (compulsory)
Yes, for all the legal instruments harmonising EU company law.
Yes, but only for legal instruments related to
No.
No opinion.
Please specify* (compulsory)
Disclosure of companies and their branches as well as the validity of their obligations and their nullity.
Maintenance and alteration of the capital.
Mergers and divisions.
Single-member ownership.
Take-over bids.
Cross-border mergers.
Certain rights of shareholders of listed companies. Other.
Please specify Company definitions, because they affect all Europeans, should not be defined exclusively by one State but should be subject to an agreement (Opinion) made at the European level by fully elected Consultative Committees such as the EESC and CoR as sketched out under answer to Question 6.
IV. User-friendly regulatory framework for European company law
Because of the large number of Directives dealing with it, European company law is sometimes regarded as not particularly ‘user friendly’. It is also exposed to the risk of inconsistencies, gaps or overlaps. In order to address this risk, the existing Directives could be amended and codified either to create a single instrument on Company Law or to only have a very limited number of Directives regrouping related areas.
8. Do you think that codifying existing EU company law Directives, thus reducing potential inconsistencies, overlaps or gaps, is an idea worth pursuing? * (compulsory)
Yes, a single EU company law instrument should replace all existing Directives.
Yes, EU company law Directives with a similar scope should be merged.
No, this is not an idea worth pursuing.
No opinion.
Please specify Politicians have created a regulatory jungle and this cannot be cleared overnight. The approach of the Founding Fathers -- still to be applied -- is best. They proposed that a European Company statute should be created as simple as possible with simple tax rates and encouragement for expansion. This could be set up in any State and the success of its simplifying procedures would encourage the mass of existing Regulations to be eliminated over the course of time. Google eurdemocracy and Lobby2
V. EU company legal forms
Apart from harmonisation, EU company law has also focussed on the definition of specific EU company law forms, such as the Statute for a European Company (SE), the Statute for the European Cooperative Society (SCE), the European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG) and more recently, the proposed Private Company Statute (SPE). Those instruments are often referred to as being a "28th regime" to the extent that they introduce new legal forms that do not harmonise, modify or substitute the existing national legal forms, but provide an additional alternative legal form.
9. What, if any, is the added value that EU company legal forms bring for European business? * (compulsory)
The European image of those company law forms.
Their European label ("SE", "SCE").
Their full legal personality.
Savings in costs of cross-border transactions.
Ad hoc solution to cross-border related issues.
Workable alternatives to existing national company law forms.
The possibility not to be subject to compulsory national requirements (for example, the SE allow public limited-liability companies to choose between one-tier and two-tier management structure).
The possibility to carry out operations, like cross-border transfer of seat.
Tax reasons.
Labour law reasons. Other.
No added value.
No opinion.
Please specify The EU should stop DIY or bricolage solutions and use the Consultative Committee duly elected democratically to sound out the real impact of such schemes. This would provide real data as the CC system provides for in-depth studies not reactions of companies and groups who have time and inclination to reply to such questionnaires as this.
10. What, if any, are the main shortcomings of EU legislation introducing EU company legal forms? * (compulsory)
The complexity linked to frequent cross-references to relevant national legislation.
The uncertainty linked to the application of different national legislations that are applied simultaneously.
The differences in the way EU company law forms are understood and used at national level.
The different degree of attractiveness across Member States.
The limitations that derive from unanimity decision-making. Other.
No main shortcomings.
No opinion.
Please specify Lack of democratic legitimacy and trust. This can only be recovered by having democratically elected Consultative Committees such as the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of Regions plus the scientific and technical bodies of Euratom.
11. Should existing EU company legal forms be reviewed* (compulsory) Yes, in particular concerning...
No.
No opinion.
Please specify* (compulsory)
Simplification and rationalisation of existing procedures.
Increased uniformity through reduction of cross-references to national legislation.
Reduction of minimum capital required.
Deletion of cross-border element requirement.
Possibility to have the registered office and the headquarters in two Member States.
Explicit solution to the issue of shelf companies. Other.
Please specify Full and democratic examination can only be done via a fully functioning 5-institution Community system. The EU is falling into greater crises because of the lack of legitimacy of Council actions. Political, social and democratic legitimacy is outlined in answer to Q6.
The European Model Company Act (EMCA)* on which academics are currently working aims at providing a modern and flexible Model Act, taking account of the latest developments in Member States. The initiative does not strive to harmonise national company law, but rather to facilitate understanding of the specific features in various national systems and to serve as a flexible and optional model.
* For further information please see: http://law.au.dk/forskning/forskningscentre/europeanmodelcompanyactemca/overview-over-the-emca-project/
12. Could optional models such as the EMCA –or similar projects- be a suitable alternative to traditional harmonisation? * (compulsory)
Yes.
No.
No opinion.
Please explain The only useful opinion would be that of democratically elected Consultative Committees that have full powers, equivalent to the European Parliament and the Council in such matters according to the treaties and the Founding Fathers.
VI. The particular case of the societas privata europaea (SPE) statute
The proposal on the SPE Statute has been discussed for more than three years without any final outcome. After lengthy negotiations, Member States could not agree in particular on the possibility to separate their registered office and the headquarters and the regime for employee participation. However, the Commission still believes that European small and medium size businesses need support at EU level, particularly in the current economic context.
13. Should the Commission explore alternative means to support European SMEs engaged in cross-border activities?* (compulsory)
Yes.
No, further efforts should be made to get an agreement on the current SPE statute proposal.
Other possibilities to explore?
No opinion.
for example:* (compulsory)
The Commission could prepare a new legislative proposal aimed at promoting EU SMEs through the European labelling of existing national company law instruments that meet a number of pre-defined harmonised requirements.
The 12th Company Law Directive could be reviewed in order to introduce a simplified company charter to facilitate the organisation of groups (i.e. single member private limited-liability companies would be exempted from certain harmonised rules, not indispensable for a single member company).
The scope of application of the SE Statute could be modified to allow smaller EU companies to benefit from it on the basis of more flexible requirements. Other.
Please specify The Commission should assume its responsibility to encourage proper elections to the Consultative Committees as is clear from the treaties and the Founding Fathers.
VII. Cross-border transfer of a company's registered office
Apart from the rules contained in the Statutes for the European Company (SE) and for the European Cooperative Society (SCE), the current EU rules do not provide for a general right to the cross-border transfer of a company's registered office, which would preserve the company's legal personality. Currently, only few Member States allow for a seat transfer without winding up and subsequent re-incorporation. In most Member states, companies must therefore establish a new legal entity in the Member State of destination, merge the companies in question and register the company formed by merger in that Member State
14. Should the EU act to facilitate the cross-border transfer of a company's registered office?* (compulsory)
Yes, through a harmonizing Directive.
Yes, through some other measure.
No, as the existing EU framework (European Company Statute, cross-border mergers Directive) provides for sufficient tools for a cross-border transfer of registered office.
No.
No opinion.
Please give further reasons for your opinion
This is again a measure that is within the legitimate right of the Consultative Committee involved to decide and give an Opinion by a vote of the three sections: enterprises, consumers, and workers.
Other questions: No opinion.
(Questions need to be settled in an institutional body after a full discussion of properly constituted professional associations with proper means of analysis and communication.)
