Tag: European Union

Son, You Have a Future in the Republican Party

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Homophobic politico Jozsef Szajer, former MEP and an ally of Hungary’s Viktor Orban and a member of his neofascist Fidesz party, has resigned following being caught breaking Covid restrictions at a gay orgy in Brussels.

Sir, you have a future in the Republican party in the United States, and possibly a gig as a Fox News pundit:

A member of the European Parliament representing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party has resigned from his position in Brussels after he was caught leaving what reports described as a 25-man orgy on Friday.

Jozsef Szajer resigned on Sunday after he admitted to breaching Belgium’s strict lockdown rules to attend a sex party, Politico reported on Tuesday. The police found 25 naked men at the gathering, including Szajer and some diplomats, the Belgian newspaper La Dernière Heure reported. The newspaper quoted a local police source as saying, “We interrupted a gang bang.”

Orban’s Hungarian government has curtailed LGBTQ rights since he was elected prime minister in 2010. Szajer, who fronted Fidesz in the European Parliament, helped rewrite Hungary’s constitution to “protect the institution of marriage as the union of a man and a woman,” The Times of London reported.

Szajer, a right-wing politician and ally of Orban, climbed out a first-floor window and was spotted “fleeing along the gutter,” the public prosecutor’s office said. A source close to the investigation told Politico that officers were called after a complaint about a “night-time disturbance.”

Authorities said narcotics were found in Szajer’s bag. Szajer insisted that he had not taken drugs.

Brush up on your English elocution, and you could be the next Rush Limbaugh, spewing hate over our airways.

I Hope That They Take Uber to the Cleaners

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Uber drivers in the EU are suing the Gypsy cab company for firing them via algorithm, which violates the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) because the company fires drivers by algorithm.

The Europeans, and most of the rest of the world, are far less interested in buying the ride-hailing company’s “Because ……… Internet” crap:

Four Uber drivers in the UK and Portugal who claim they were dismissed unfairly by the company’s anti-fraud algorithm have challenged their account deactivations in a European court, citing GDPR protections against automated decision making.

The App Drivers & Couriers Union, a UK-based worker advocacy group, filed a legal complaint on Monday in a district court in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on behalf of the dismissed drivers.

“Uber has been allowed to violate employment law with impunity for years and now we are seeing a glimpse into an Orwellian world of work where workers have no rights and are managed by machine,” said Yaseen Aslam, President of the App Drivers & Couriers Union, in a statement. “If Uber is not checked, this practice will become the norm for everyone.”

Anton Ekker, the attorney representing the four former drivers – three from the UK and one from Portugal – said in a statement that the case represents the first challenge under the GDPR to automated decisions affecting the estimated 3.9m Uber drivers worldwide.

Article 22 of the GDPR states individuals “have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her.”

I really hope that Uber gets nailed to the wall on this.

Belgian Ambassadors Spouting Centuries Old Royal Grants of Fishing Rights Is No Basis for a System of Government

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The Belgian ambassador who invoked the 1666 Privilegie der Visscherie given by Charles II of England to Flemish fishermen, just had a mic drop moment.

I think that it was a joke, though one can never be sure:

All is fair in love and cod war. And with the EU’s coastal states under pressure to give way on Britain’s demands for greater fishing catches in its waters post-Brexit, any old argument is worth a try.

When the issue of the future access of European fishing fleets was being discussed by EU ambassadors in Brussels on Wednesday the Belgian government’s representative, Willem van de Voorde, made a notable intervention.

To the confusion of some, and the delight of others, the ambassador cited a treaty signed some 350 years ago by King Charles II which had granted 50 Flemish fishermen from Bruges “eternal rights” to English fishing waters. It was an important historical footnote illustrating the long relationship between Belgian fishermen and British waters, Van de Voorde suggested.

I hope that this was a joke, but one can never be sure with those wily Belgians.

………

“I wasn’t quite sure what he was on about but I think he was joking,” said one confused diplomat who had listened to Van de Voorde’s intervention. “But, then, you never know.”

While the validity of the Belgian claim is somewhat unlikely, the tensions in Brussels over fishing access for European fleets from 1 January are very real.

The UK has demanded a radical increase in fishing catches in its exclusive economic zone as it leaves the EU’s common fisheries policy.

I love obscure historical jokes.

History Rhyming

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Considering Germany’s current state of European hegemon, this is particularly concerning:

Güstrow, Germany — The plan sounded frighteningly concrete. The group would round up political enemies and those defending migrants and refugees, put them on trucks and drive them to a secret location.

Then they would kill them.

One member had already bought 30 body bags. More body bags were on an order list, investigators say, along with quicklime, used to decompose organic material.

On the surface, those discussing the plan seemed reputable. One was a lawyer and local politician, but with a special hatred of immigrants. Two were active army reservists. Two others were police officers, including Marko Gross, a police sniper and former parachutist who acted as their unofficial leader.

The group grew out of a nationwide chat network for soldiers and others with far-right sympathies set up by a member of Germany’s elite special forces, the KSK. Over time, under Mr. Gross’s supervision, they formed a parallel group of their own. Members included a doctor, an engineer, a decorator, a gym owner, even a local fisherman.

They called themselves Nordkreuz, or Northern Cross.

………

They denied they had plotted to kill anyone. But investigators and prosecutors, as well an account one member gave to the police — transcripts of which were seen by The New York Times — indicate their planning took a more sinister turn.

Germany has belatedly begun dealing with far-right networks that officials now say are far more extensive than they ever understood. The reach of far-right extremists into its armed forces is particularly alarming in a country that has worked to cleanse itself of its Nazi past and the horrors of the Holocaust. In July the government disbanded an entire company infiltrated by extremists in the nation’s special forces.

………

Far-right extremism penetrated multiple layers of German society in the years when the authorities underestimated the threat or were reluctant to countenance it fully, officials and lawmakers acknowledge. Now they are struggling to uproot it.

………

Neo-Nazi groups and other extremists call it Day X — a mythical moment when Germany’s social order collapses, requiring committed far-right extremists, in their telling, to save themselves and rescue the nation.

………

“I fear we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg,” said Dirk Friedriszik, a lawmaker in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where Nordkreuz was founded. “It isn’t just the KSK. The real worry is: These cells are everywhere. In the army, in the police, in reservist units.”

German imposition of sado-monetarism on the rest of the EU has led to a resurgence of right wing nationalism in both Europe and the EU, and now we know that Germany is not immune to the toxic reaction to its misguided ideology.

Introducing the Mega-Morissette

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Facebook is suing the EU claiming that its Brussels’ anti-trust investigation of the social media giant’s online markets constitutes a violation Facebook’s privacy.

In related news, Mark Zuckerberg murdered his parents and asked for mercy as an orphan.

This is f%$#ed up and sh%$:

American tech giants have enjoyed a reversal of their EU legal fortunes over the past fortnight as Euro nation courts issued rulings in their favor – and now Facebook has even sued the European Union itself, alleging the political bloc’s agencies broke their own data protection rules.

Facebook filed a lawsuit against EU competition regulators on Monday alleging that enforcers were improperly seeking access to sensitive employee personal data.

The anti social media network said in a statement to financial newswire Reuters that EU regulators had made “exceptionally broad” demands for documents during an antitrust investigation into Facebook’s online marketplace.

Facebook assistant general counsel Tim Lamb was quoted as saying, apparently with a straight face: “The exceptionally broad nature of the Commission’s requests means we would be required to turn over predominantly irrelevant documents that have nothing to do with the Commission’s investigations, including highly sensitive personal information such as employees’ medical information, personal financial documents, and private information about family members of employees.”

Notwithstanding Facebook’s business model of encouraging the world’s citizens to upload such details about themselves to Facebook’s services for the company to monetise, the suit has been filed in the EU General Court in Luxembourg. It includes demands for the court to halt further EU regulatory data demands against Facebook until further notice. An EU Commission spokesman said it would defend the lawsuit.

Facebook also told the newswire that EU agents had demanded copies of any internal Facebook document containing phrases such as “not good for us”, “big question” and “shut down”, among 2,500 others.

This is No Surprise

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The European Court of Justice has ruled that servers in the US are insufficiently secure to comply with EU privacy regulations.

This is no surprise. The deal with the US has largely been a fig-leaf created as a result of brow-beating of European regulators by the US State Security Apparatus:

The European Union’s top court on Thursday threw a large portion of transatlantic digital commerce into disarray, ruling that data of E.U. residents is not sufficiently protected from government surveillance when it is transferred to the United States.

The ruling was likely to increase transatlantic tensions at a moment when President Trump has already been threatening tariffs and retaliation against the E.U. for what he says are unfair business practices. It was a victory for privacy advocates, who said that E.U. citizens are not as protected when their information is transferred to U.S. servers as when that information stays inside Europe.

The European Court of Justice ruled that a commonly used data protection agreement known as Privacy Shield did not adequately uphold E.U. privacy law.

………

The court said that it was unacceptable for E.U. citizens not to have “actionable rights” to question U.S. surveillance practices.

European data privacy advocates celebrated the decision.

It’s a good thing that the US State Security apparatus is finally getting some push-back internationally.

Welcome to the Brotherhood of Sh%$-Hole Nations

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As a result of an abysmally managed pandemic response, it is looking increasingly likely that the EU is giving serious consideration to banning travelers from the United States.

This is some definition of, “Making America Great Again,” that I was previously unaware of:

European Union countries rushing to revive their economies and reopen their borders after months of coronavirus restrictions are prepared to block Americans from entering because the United States has failed to control the scourge, according to draft lists of acceptable travelers reviewed by The New York Times.

 That prospect, which would lump American visitors in with Russians and Brazilians as unwelcome, is a stinging blow to American prestige in the world and a repudiation of President Trump’s handling of the virus in the United States, which has more than 2.3 million cases and upward of 120,000 deaths, more than any other country.

 European nations are currently haggling over two potential lists of acceptable visitors based on how countries are faring with the coronavirus pandemic. Both lists include China, as well as developing nations like Uganda, Cuba and Vietnam. Both also exclude the United States and other countries that were deemed too risky because of the spread of the virus.

Welcome to the 3rd world, folks.

The Return of the Mafia State

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With Italy in crisis over its Covid-19 epidemic and the EU offering little help, the state lacks the resources to help ordinary people.

Rather unsurprisingly, the Mafia is stepping in to help the people, which is a sound investment for them, because if they have the goodwill of the population, then they will be able to function without interference from the local and national law enforcement.

This is going to set back progress against organized crime in Italy by years, if not decades, and their activities will cross borders into the rest of the EU:

As Italy struggles to pull its economy through the coronavirus crisis, the Mafia is gaining local support by distributing free food to poor families in quarantine who have run out of cash, authorities have warned.

………

“For over a month, shops, cafés, restaurants and pubs have been closed,” Nicola Gratteri, antimafia investigator and head of the prosecutor’s office in Catanzaro, told the Guardian. “Millions of people work in the grey economy, which means that they haven’t received any income in more than a month and have no idea when they might return to work. The government is issuing so-called shopping vouchers to support people. If the state doesn’t step in soon to help these families, the mafia will provide its services, imposing their control over people’s lives.”

The ramifications of the lockdown in Italy are affecting the estimated 3.3 million people in Italy who work off the books. Of those, more than 1 million live in the south, according to the most recent figures from CGIA Mestre, a Venice-based small business association. There have been reports of small shop owners being pressured to give food for free, while police are patrolling supermarkets in some areas to stop thefts. Videos of people in Sicily protesting against the government’s stalled response, or people beating their fists outside banks in Bari for a €50 (£44) loan are going viral and throwing fuel on the crisis; a fire the mafia is more than willing to stoke.

From the first signals of mounting social unrest, the Italian minister of the interior, Luciana Lamorgese, said ‘‘the mafia could take advantage of the rising poverty, swooping in to recruit people to its organisation’’. Or simply stepping in to distribute free food parcels of pasta, water, flour and milk.

………

“Mafias are not just criminal organisations,’’ Federico Varese, professor of criminology at the University of Oxford, said. “They are organisations that aspire to govern territories and markets. Commentators often focus on the financial aspect of mafias but they tend to forget that their strength comes from having a local base from which to operate.”

This is the bitter fruit of EU mandated austerity.

Today in Boneheaded Rent Seeking

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The EU Court of Justice has ruled that rental car companies do not have to pay a license fee for the public performance of music when they rent a car, even though every car made today has a radio, and the drivers could theoretically play music on the radio.

These sort of outrageous claims are the rule, not the exception, because there are no penalties for attempting to promulgate this bullsh%$:

Performance Rights Organizations (PROs), sometimes known as “Collection Societies,” have a long history of demanding licensing for just about every damn thing. That’s why there was just some confusion about whether or not those with musical talents would even be allowed to perform from their balconies while in COVID-19 lockdown. And if you thought that it was crazy that anyone would even worry about things like that, it’s because you haven’t spent years following the crazy demands made by PROs, including demanding a license for a woman in a grocery store singing while stocking the shelves, a public performance license for having the radio on in a horse stable (for the horses), or claiming that your ringtone needs a separate “public performance” license, or saying that hotels that have radios in their rooms should pay a public performance license.

Five years ago, we wrote about another such crazy demand — a PRO in Sweden demanding that rental car companies pay a performance license because their cars had radios, and since “the public” could rent their cards and listen to the radio, that constituted “a communication to the public” that required a separate license. The case has bounced around the courts, and finally up to the Court of Justice for the EU which has now, finally, ruled that merely renting cars does not constitute “communication to the public.”

A reevaluation, and a roll-back of implicit and explicit subsidies related to IP needs to happen sooner, rather than later.

Because, F%$# You, French Edition

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Emanuel Macron’s plan to reform (cut) pensions in France have proved spectacularly unpopular.

It’s so unpopular that even with overwhelming majority that he has in Parliament, its passage would push into municipal elections, so he has implemented his pension cuts through Presidential decree, because ……… well, you know:

The French government forced through its pension reforms by decree in a move designed to undercut opposition parties’ efforts to plague parliamentary debates with more than 40,000 amendments to the bill.

The pension overhaul, which aims to unify the country’s 42 different profession-specific retirement schemes, sparked the longest public transport strike in France’s history before making it to parliament. On Saturday evening, Edouard Philippe, prime minister, caught his parliamentary majority off guard by announcing he would trigger the 49.3 article in the constitution allowing the government to override parliament to adopt the legislation.

………

Philippe Martinez, head of the leftwing CGT trade union, told French news service AFP that the unions would take to the streets once again next week against the reforms. The leader of the far-left political party, La France Insoumise — France Unbowed — decried the “extraordinarily violent” methods of the government while Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Rassemblement National, or National Gathering, said: “The French will not forgive this outrageous manoeuvre.”

I understand that politics ain’t beanbag, but this sort of sh%$ is why the right wing is on the rise in the EU.

The continual use anti-democratic tactics to strip protections from ordinary citizens while bailing out bankers and their ilk will make this worse, and not better.

Oh the Huge Manatee!

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The EU is going to black the Cayman Islands as a money laundering nation.

This will be a big problem for the folks working in the City of London, since a big part of their business is tax evasion and money laundering through former British colonies:

The Cayman Islands, a British overseas territory, is to be put on an EU blacklist of tax havens, less than two weeks after the UK’s withdrawal from the bloc.

………

The EU’s blacklist is an attempt to clamp down on the estimated £506bn lost to aggressive tax avoidance every year but member states are not “screened” in the process of drawing up the blacklist.

Territories linked to member states have also avoided the blacklist and the UK had heavily lobbied to protect its overseas territories from such scrutiny in the past.

On Wednesday, EU ambassadors judged that the islands in the western Caribbean Sea are not effectively cooperating with Brussels on financial transparency, the Financial Times reported.

The Cayman Islands will join Fiji, Oman, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, Vanuatu and the three US territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands, on the “non-cooperative” list.

For the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, think of the poor bankers, who will have to find productive work.

The horror ………

Ireland’s Economy is Based on Tax Evasion

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This probably applies to even a greater degree to Luxembourg.

This is why they, and 10 other nations, torpedoed a proposal to add transparency in transnational tax avoidance:

Twelve EU countries, including Ireland, have blocked a proposed new rule that would have forced multinational companies to reveal how much profit they make and how little tax they pay in each of the 28 member states.

The proposed directive was designed to shine a light on how some of the world’s biggest companies – such as Apple, Facebook and Google – avoid paying an estimated $500bn a year in taxes by shifting their profits from higher-tax countries such as the UK, France and Germany to zero-tax or low-tax jurisdictions including Ireland, Luxembourg and Malta.

Ireland is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the current rules. The country hosts corporate offices that collect revenue and profits generated by many multinational companies across the EU bloc. Ireland allows global technology companies to pay corporation tax at rate as low as 6.25%, compared with 19% in the UK.

Ireland’s decision to vote against the proposed directive – which would have forced companies to report their revenues and profits on a country-by-country basis – came as the Irish tax-and-spending watchdog warned that the country’s economy could collapse if there was a global clampdown on tax avoidance.

The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) warned on Thursday that the country’s economy has become so reliant on taxes paid by multinationals that half of all of corporate taxes paid in the nation come from just 10 global companies. The firms are not named, but they are believed to include US technology giants Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Dell, Google and Oracle.

Other countries that have set themselves up as low-tax environments helping to shelter the profits of the world’s biggest companies were also among those that voted against. They include Luxembourg, Malta, Cyprus, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Croatia.

………

The vote came more than three years after the European commission promised to expose multinational corporations’ tax avoidance measures following the Panama Papers revelations. The proposal would have made country-by-country reporting mandatory for companies with an annual turnover of more than €750m.

Elena Gaita, a senior policy officer at anti-corruption charity Transparency International, said: “It’s an outrage that member states have once again put the interests of big business above those of citizens.

………


The IFAC said corporation tax receipts had risen to account for one in every five euros of tax collected by the Irish government. It warned that between €2bn-€6bn (£1.7bn-£5bn) of the €10bn total corporate tax take is what it calls “excess”. “In other words, beyond what would be expected based on the economy’s underlying performance and historical and international norms.”

The budgetary watchdog said the Irish government had become increasing reliant on corporate tax receipts, which rose to a record €10.4bn last year, more than double the amount collected in 2014. “The reliance on these volatile receipts leaves the government vulnerable to changes to the global tax environment, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) base erosion and profit shifting initiative,” IFAC said.

The OECD is trying to force big-tech companies, such as Facebook, Amazon and Google, to pay more tax in countries where they actually sell their products and services.

Ireland’s corporate tax rate is 12.5% but it charges only 6.25% for profits linked to a company’s patent or intellectual property.

Ireland’s tax base is based on tax evasion and money laundering. So is much of its economy.

Celtic Tiger, my ass.

This Is Familiar, and Not in a Comfortable Way

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This is serious, “Arbeit Macht Frei,” stuff:

A wry smile crept across Steffan Stefanov’s face as he scanned the internet, digesting news of England’s now notorious football match against Bulgaria. It wasn’t that he was belittling the racist abuse that was directed against the black English players, but rather the use of two words littering media reports about it.

“Bulgaria and racism,” he proclaimed. “The two go hand-in-hand. It’s our reality, we live it every day. I’m sorry for the England players who were targeted but, in truth, this was pretty minor for us.”

………

The government of prime minister Boyko Borissov is propped up by a grouping of three small rightwing populist parties known collectively as the “United Patriots”. They are made up of the National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria (NFSB), the Bulgarian National Movement and the Attack party.

Krasimir Karakachanov, head of the Bulgarian National Movement, holds three portfolios – deputy prime minister, minister for defence and minister for public order and security. His “Roma integration strategy,” or “concept for the integration of the unsocialised Gypsy (Roma) ethnicity” to give it its formal name, is due to be presented to the Bulgarian parliament and could soon become law.

It defines Roma as “asocial Gypsies,” a term used by the Nazis, and calls for limits on the number of children some Roma women can have; the introduction of compulsory “labour education schools” for Roma children and forced work programmes for sections of the community. It also depicts the Roma as “non-native Europeans” left over from the Ottoman empire.

His party’s manifesto also calls for the creation of “reservations” for Roma based on the model used for Native Americans or Indigenous Australians, claiming that they could become “tourist attractions”.

Earlier this year, following violence between Bulgarian Roma and non-Roma, Karakachanov declared: “The truth is that we need to undertake a complete programme for a solution to the Gypsy problem.”

His predecessor as deputy prime minister Valeri Simeonov described the Roma as “arrogant, presumptuous and ferocious humanoids”. He was also chair of Bulgaria’s National Council for Cooperation on Ethnic and Integration Issues at the time.

Jonathan Lee, spokesman for the European Roma Rights Centre, said: “Unfortunately, racist chanting and offensive gestures from the terraces is not even close to as bad as it gets in Bulgaria. Last Monday night, Europe was confronted with what for most Roma in the country is the everyday. Rising anti-Gypsyism, decline of the rule of law, and increasingly fascist political rhetoric is nothing new – it just rarely gets such a public stage.”

Lee added: “This is an EU member state where violent race mobs are the norm, police violence is sudden and unpredictable, punitive demolitions of people’s homes are the appropriate government response, random murders of Romany citizens only a fleeting headline, and the rights and dignity of Romany citizens are routinely denied on a daily basis.”

So now we have two NATO allies (Turkey and Bulgaria) who have proposed credible attempts at genocide, Turkey against the Kurds, and Bulgaria against the Roma.

And then you have AfD in Germany, the NR in France, the LN in Italy, etc. on the rise.

Obviously, Turkey is not in the EU, but the rest of them are, and the promise of the whole, “European Project,” that it would prevent the horrors of the 20th century, seems increasingly remote.

Bye Bye Boris

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Boris Johnson hoped to get his Brexit proposal approved today.

Things did not go as planned :

MPs have inflicted a humiliating defeat on Boris Johnson by passing a backbench amendment withholding their support from his Brexit deal.

Instead of backing Johnson’s agreement in a “meaningful vote”, MPs passed an amendment tabled by a cross-party group of MPs led by Oliver Letwin by 322 votes to 306 – a majority of 16.

The prime minister said he was not “daunted or dismayed” by the defeat, and would press ahead with tabling Brexit legislation next week. MPs are likely to take the opportunity to table a string of amendments, including on trying to force a second referendum.

The move by cross-party MPs was aimed at forcing Johnson to comply with the terms of the Benn act, which obliges him to write to the EU to request a Brexit delay, if he had not won approval for his deal by 11pm.

As to that letter to the EU requesting a delay?  Johnson is doing the absolute minimum as defined by law, resusing to sign the letter asking for an extension, and signing an accompanying letter asking for an extension not to be granted:

Boris Johnson has sent an unsigned letter to European council president Donald Tusk requesting a further Brexit delay beyond 31 October – accompanied by a signed one arguing against it.

The prime minister sent three letters: an unsigned photocopy of the request he was obliged to send under the Benn Act, an explanatory letter from the UK’s ambassador to the EU and a personal letter explaining why Downing Street did not want an extension.

In the signed message, he warned of the “corrosive impact” of a long delay, and that “a further extension would damage the interests of the UK and our EU partners, and the relationship between us”. He said Parliament had “missed the opportunity to inject momentum into the ratification process” yet remained confident Brexit legislation would be passed by 31 October.

The move sparked concerns the prime minister could face fresh court action. One former Tory cabinet minister said: “This is clearly against the spirit of the Benn Act and is not consistent with the assurances that were given by Downing Street to the Scottish courts about applying for an extension. It will also put government law officers in a very uncomfortable position.”

………

After the extension request was sent, Jeremy Corbyn accused Johnson of “petulant posturing and bluster” and said “his damaging deal was defeated today.”

“Petulant posturing and bluster,” is pretty much the defining feature of BoJo.

I’m expecting a crash-out. 

Speaking of Insufferable Prats Having a Bad Day

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The British supreme court just ruled that Boris Johnson’s proroguing parliament for 5 weeks is illegal.

Basically, they said that he lied to the Queen:

The supreme court has ruled that Boris Johnson’s advice to the Queen that parliament should be prorogued for five weeks at the height of the Brexit crisis was unlawful.

The unanimous judgment from 11 justices on the UK’s highest court followed an emergency three-day hearing last week that exposed fundamental legal differences over interpreting the country’s unwritten constitution.

………

Then, giving the court’s judgment on whether the decision to suspend parliament was legal, Hale said: “This court has … concluded that the prime minister’s advice to Her Majesty [ to suspend parliament] was unlawful, void and of no effect. This means that the order in council to which it led was also unlawful, void and of no effect should be quashed.

………

She [Hale] added: “The court is bound to conclude, therefore, that the decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification.”

The judgment said: “This was not a normal prorogation in the run-up to a Queen’s speech. It prevented parliament from carrying out its constitutional role for five out of a possible eight weeks between the end of the summer recess and exit day on 31 October.

………

The court stopped short of declaring that the advice given by Johnson to the Queen was improper. It was a question. they said, they did not need to address since they had already found the effect of the prorogation was itself unlawful.

That denial at the end seems to me to be legalese for, “I see what you did there.”

I’m not sure how the politics will play out, but it seems likely that it’s better for people not named Boris Johnson than it is for people named Boris Johnson.

I Figured That Bojo Would Have This in His Back Pocket

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I’ve always wondered when one of the EU member nations might object to extending the UK’s exit date, because swuch a decision requires unanimity.

Well, it appears that Boris Johnson may have cut some sort of deal with Hungary to force a hard Brexit:

The European Union fears Boris Johnson is plotting to persuade Hungary to veto a Brexit delay, in a move that would dramatically raise the risk that Britain will fall out of the European Union without a deal.

Prime Minister Johnson said last week he’d rather be “dead in a ditch” than comply with a vote in Parliament forcing him to ask the EU to postpone Brexit beyond Oct. 31.

But officials at the EU — which is broadly in favor of an extension if it’s the only way to prevent a no-deal Brexit — privately voiced fears that one of their own leaders could help Johnson out. If a no-deal divorce is to be avoided, all remaining 27 member states would need to agree with Britain to extend the Brexit negotiating period at an October summit in Brussels.
EU officials privately acknowledge they could do little to stop a rebel leader wielding their veto. They worry that Johnson will try to convince Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has had his own clashes with Brussels over migration and steps to restrict democracy, to help him out. They think the U.K. sees Orban as an ally who will enjoy the opportunity to stand up against the European establishment.

Boris may be an upper class twit, but I figured that he’d find a partner in crime across the English Channel.

More Bad News for Boeing

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Europe’s aviation safety agency, which is conducting its own independent review of Boeing’s grounded 737 MAX, is not satisfied with a key detail of Boeing’s fix to the jet. It wants Boeing to do more to improve the integrity of the sensors that failed on the two fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, killing 346 people.

And it’s demanding that Boeing demonstrate in flight tests the stability of the MAX during extreme maneuvers, not only with Boeing’s newly updated flight-control system but also with that system switched off.

………

Boeing has publicly said it hopes for FAA clearance for the MAX in October so that it can return to passenger service in the U.S. this year.

Typically, overseas regulators follow the FAA’s lead. But after the MAX crashes revealed shortcomings in the FAA’s certification process, that’s no longer certain.

One of Ky’s slides cited a letter EASA sent to the FAA on April 1, less than three weeks after the MAX was grounded, that laid out four conditions for it to allow the MAX to return to service.
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The first condition stipulated is, “Design changes proposed by Boeing are EASA approved (no delegation to FAA).”

The second is that EASA complete an “additional and broader independent review” of the aircraft, beyond the specific design changes to the flight-control system that went haywire on the crash flights.

………

Although Boeing has updated MCAS so that it now takes input from both Angle of Attack sensors on the MAX instead of only one, and won’t operate if they disagree, Ky indicated EASA finds this insufficient.

I would note that in order to meet the EU requirements, Boeing will have to make physical changes to the aircraft to change its aerodynamics, which is exactly what they were trying avoid through the MCAS system in the first place.

Boeing is in a world of hurt in the best case scenario.

There Hasn’t Been a War Run This Badly since Olaf the Hairy, King of All the Vikings, Ordered 80,000 Battle Helmets with the Horns on the Inside.

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In what should surprise no one, HMS Boris Johnson has hit the Brexit shoals, and is taking on water:

British lawmakers on Tuesday rose up against Prime Minister Boris Johnson, moving to prevent him from taking the country out of the European Union without a formal agreement. The epic showdown pushed Britain to the verge of a new election.

After losing his first-ever vote as prime minister, Mr. Johnson stood up in Parliament and said he intended to present a formal request for a snap general election to lawmakers, who would have to approve it.

A little over a month ago, Mr. Johnson, a brash, blustery politician often compared to President Trump, swept into office with a vow to finally wrest Britain from the European Union by whatever means necessary, even if it meant a disorderly, no-deal departure.

Now, Parliament has pulled the rug out from under him, and Mr. Johnson is at risk of falling into the same Brexit quagmire that dragged down his predecessor as prime minister, Theresa May.

The lawmakers forced his hand by voting by 328 to 301 to take control of Parliament away from the government and vote on legislation as soon as Wednesday that would block the prime minister from making good on his threat of a no-deal Brexit.

I think that no-deal Brexit will happen anyway, if just because neither the Lib-Dems nor the Blairites are willing to allow Jeremy Corbyn, who is still in control of the plurality of the sane votes in Parliament, to achieve anything like a success.

It’s the proverbial bucket of crabs.

Your Brexit Dogs Breakfast Update

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 Boris Johnson has moved to suspend Parliament in order to ensure that Brexit goes forward.

While suspending (proroguing) Parliament is usually a fairly routine thing, it tends to be used to clear the decks of legislative items that have piled up over a session, use of the procedure to explicitly prevent parliament from weighing in on a major issue, as Johnson is doing now, is not:

Boris Johnson has set up an extraordinary confrontation with MPs when they return to Westminster next week by announcing that he has asked the Queen to suspend parliament for five weeks from mid-September.

The prime minister claimed there would be “ample time” to debate Brexit, as he wrote to MPs on Wednesday, saying he had spoken to the Queen and asked her to suspend parliament from “the second sitting week in September”. The Queen approved the order later on Wednesday.

MPs will then not return to Westminster until 14 October, when he said there would be a new Queen’s speech, setting out what he called a “bold and ambitious domestic legislative agenda for the renewal of our country after Brexit”.

I do not know enough about UK politics to tell whether the spectacle of people completely losing their sh%$ over this action is a legitimate expression of outrage or political posturing.

My prediction remains the same though, a Brexit, no-deal or deal, will be much worse than the Brexit supporters predict, and much better than the Brexit supporters predict.

I do think that, unlike Theresa May, Johnson understands the nature of the negotiations though, as evidenced by his willingness to walk away.

More significantly, he’s willing to put EU migration rules on the table, which would have the effect of severely curtailing remittances to EU nations from their nationals working in Britain, which would have a devastating effect on the economies of a number of EU members, most notably the Baltic states.

I think that any chance for a graceful transition has passed now, sit it will be a profoundly bumpy ride.

It Appears that the Very Serious People in Britain Think that Corbyn is Worse than a Hard Brexit

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I have been rather confused by how the anti-Brexit, and anti-hard Brexit actors have been behaving in what can only be described in a self-destructive manner.

Well, recent developments show that they believe that Jeremy Corbyn being Prime Minister is worse than a Brexit crash-out.

Considering the scenarios that they have described for a no-deal exit from the EU, a complete shut down of exports, food shortages, and an economic implosion, their phobia of the left-wing Labour leader is nuts:

Brexiters stop at nothing to get what they want and remainers stop at everything. The laws of political motion then dictate which direction things move.

Jeremy Corbyn has written to MPs inviting them to install him in Downing Street, having deposed Boris Johnson with a vote of no confidence. His tenure would, he promises, be “strictly time-limited” – long enough to call a general election and seek the necessary article 50 extension to conduct a ballot.

For Corbyn this is the simplest route out of the current mess. There is a government hell-bent on doing something that a majority of MPs oppose and believe to be ruinous – hurtling off a Brexit cliff-edge. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act gives the Commons 14 days to organise a replacement when an incumbent government is defeated in a no-confidence vote. Who else is going to lead that administration if not the leader of Her Majesty’s opposition? In constitutional terms he is the obvious candidate; probably the only candidate.

But in the minds of scores of MPs he is not. His past equivocations over Europe are not the reason, or at least not the only reason. Pro-European Tory rebels, Liberal Democrats, the rag-tag platoon of independents and semi-autonomous tribes of Labour MPs have spent months fretting about ways to thwart a hard Brexit, apparently ready to pull every procedural lever and contemplate all manner of unorthodox coalitions. Not much has been excluded from those considerations, except for a tacit prohibition on any route that makes a prime minister of the current Labour leader. Their horror of Corbyn is equal to – or greater than – their horror of Brexit. That has been so well understood by the participants in the discussion that few have felt much need to articulate it. Corbyn’s letter now obliges them to spell it out.

That is easier for some than others. Tories and ex-Labour independents don’t have much difficulty vocalising reasons why they think the Labour leader is unfit for office, even on a time-limited basis. They see him as a political extremist, a friend of terrorists, Putin stooges and antisemites. They think he would bring to Downing Street a sinister creed and a cabal of advisers whose very presence inside No 10 would sabotage the safety of the UK. For MPs who feel that way, the objection to a single day of Corbyn rule, even for a tactical purpose, is visceral and moral.

But there are others – Greens, Lib Dems and Labour moderates – who, if they share that passionate aversion, are reluctant to express it in public. Jo Swinson comes close. When elected to lead the Lib Dems she ruled out an alliance with Corbyn on the grounds that he couldn’t be trusted on the European question, but also (added almost as an afterthought) because “he is dangerous for our national security and for our economic security, too”.

………

There is something disingenuous about the discussions among MPs about a “government of national unity”(GNU) to avert a no-deal Brexit. It is predicated on concepts of nation and unity that don’t include those who are desperate to leave the EU. Those who voted leave are broadly satisfied with the government they currently have. It is, in truth, a euphemism for a model of technocratic, centre-facing liberal administration defined as much by a rejection of Corbynism as by revulsion at the Trumpian nationalist character that Brexit has acquired. There are many voters who would be glad to have a moderate, bipartisan government. They can play fantasy football with exotic cabinet combinations – Dominic Grieve as chancellor; Keir Starmer to fix Brexit; Caroline Lucas for the environment; Jo Swinson for home secretary. And the prime minister? David Lidington? Yvette Cooper? Anyone as long as it isn’t a Johnson … or a Corbyn. But the Commons numbers don’t add up for that either, unless most of the parliamentary Labour party abandons the whip. It won’t.

The Labour leader knows this and he is calling the whole GNU bluff. If a government falls, the opposition leader is the next in line to have a go and, if that can’t be arranged, there is an election. That is how it works. There might be many reasons why MPs do not want an opposition leader to take charge – that is their constitutional right, too – reasons of tactical political advantage and reasons of conscience. But MPs have not all been candid about what those reasons are; why it is that so many find Corbyn as toxic as Brexit. Their problem is that there aren’t a lot of other options. And the laws of political motion are working against them.

This level of antipathy is not driven by a fear that Corbyn will fail, it is being driven by a fear that he might succeed.

It’s OK that Iceland jailed the bankers and protected its citizens, because there are fewer than ½ a million people on that island.

If that happens in the UK, and more importantly to the financial center known as the City of London, then their patrons, and their comfortable lifestyles, are a thing of the past.