David Hammerstein wrote last week:
Written Declaration presented today in Brussels
“ACTA is legislation laundering on an international scale, trying to covertly push through what could never be passed in most national parliaments” declared the socialist Member of the European Parliament Lambrinidis in his presentation of a written declaration that aims at establishing the official oppositon to ACTA of Europe´s elected representatives. He also criticized ACTA´s intention of “systematic monitoring of citizens in the hands of internet service providers, giving them more power than police have in anti-terror operations”.
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Here the article again. The quote from Lambrinidis sounds rather harsh and shrill to me but it is all true. Yes, the misuse of FTA for policy laundry is a problem for our emerging European democracy. David pointed that out. I wrote an article a while ago to try out the Salon.com blog titled What laws and bananas have in common about the same issue.
I used a tone which sounds a bit propagandistic:
No more tariffs and quota for imports and exports of bananas and steam engines but legislation itself is now traded across the Atlantic, across the world. Trade administration, not parliament, makes our laws. Billions of citizens are affected but don’t get consulted in any way. Business and civil society stakeholders and our representative legislators are unable to inspect what is negotiated.
It sounds rather harsh and shrill to me but it is all true. When I read it as if it were from another person I would find it exaggerated. How do we manage to stay calm, moderate and diplomatic when a process is outrageous? Furthermore, how do we bridge a “time gap” until the rest finds out what is going on? You censor yourself, you tune your communication a bit down. Do I endorse the Lambrinidis quote? Absolutely. Would I communicate in that bluntness? Probably not.
A very usual thing to do when a bomb destroys your house is to take a brush and clean the street in front of the ruins.
Sköne Oke 