Saturday 3 September 2016

That Bite of the Apple.

The weather is getting a bit too broken for keeping the Anna M in Horseshoe Bay with comfort. I hope to have the sun-room roofed this time next week and will be looking for a spell of good weather for heading to Spain. Anyone out there up for the trip?
Jean-Paul on the wall.

I was given a sharp reminder of how dependent I am becoming on the internet lately, by being shut out of it for a while. It is undeniable that the world had better watch out, as to who is going to be in control of it. There seem to be two quite distinct alternatives ahead; there is the possibility of a world controlled by a small and hugely rich clique of global companies, able to manipulate impoverished masses who face a very difficult struggle to survive, and on the other hand a new civilisation which will see an unprecedented blossoming and empowerment at all levels of society, as the new technology is finally made to serve rather than enslave!

I suppose everyone knows this at some level, but for one reason or another, there will be widespread efforts to cloud the issue. A good example is a column in the Daily Telegraph lately by Mr AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD; ‘Apple travesty is a reminder why Britain must leave the lawless EU’.  It seems to me that since time is generally too short for people like me to read this sort of stuff, it goes too often unchallenged. One advantage of the internet is that it enables one to peruse those opinions that one does not buy into, but there still is a danger that, confronted with so much material, one just settles for reading congenial stuff.

Anyway, in order to challenge Mr Evans-Pritchard, I shall have to quote him at some length. First of all he sets out to demonise the European Commission:-

‘Europe's Competition Directorate commands the shock troops of the EU power structure. Ensconced in its fortress at Place Madou, it can dispatch swat teams on corporate dawn raids across Europe without a search warrant.
It operates outside the normal judicial control that we take for granted in a developed democracy. The US Justice Department could never dream of acting in such a fashion.
Apple is just the latest of the great US digital companies to face this Star Chamber. It has vowed to appeal the monster €13bn fine handed down from Brussels this week for violation of EU state aid rules, but the only recourse is the European Court of Justice. This is usually a forlorn ritual. The ECJ is a political body, the enforcer of the EU's teleological doctrines. It ratifies executive power.’

Splendid stuff indeed! But one might remind the writer that the European Commission is appointed by the (democratically elected) national governments precisely because the likes of the British Government did not want to give it the prestige of being directly elected. The ECJ is one of several balances to its powers. The Star Chamber  was a Court set up under a Catholic monarch of England, according to Wikipedia ‘to ensure the fair enforcement of laws against the English upper class, those so powerful that ordinary courts could never convict them of their crimes.’ It acquired its pejorative connotations under King Henry VIII who used it as ‘a political weapon for bringing actions against opponents to his policies.’
I shall deal with the ‘EU's teleological doctrines’ later. After the preemptive strikes that even Telegraph readers may dismiss as mere rhetoric, Mr Evans-Pritchard gets around to addressing the awkward facts of the matter in a rather surprising manner:-
‘We can agree too that Apple's cosy EU (? - they’ve always been in contention with the EU) arrangements should never have been permitted. It paid the standard 12.5pc corporate tax on its Irish earnings - and is the country’s biggest taxpayer - but the Commission alleges that its effective rate of tax on broader earnings in 2014 was 0.005pc, achieved by shuffling profits into a special 'stateless company' with its headquarters in Ireland.
"The profits did not have any factual or economic justification. The “head office” had no employees, no premises and no real activities," said Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition chief.

This may be true but that does not empower the Commission to act arbitrarily, retroactively, and beyond the rule of law. What is really going on - as often in EU affairs - is a complex political attack on multiple fronts. It is a reminder of why Britain must remove itself entirely and forever from the clutches of this Caesaropapist construction.’

Our friend does not even attempt to grapple with the mere essential facts of the case. Instead he dismisses the whole business as ‘a political attack’, and he concludes by responding to it in these terms:-

‘The US has in past played down the episodic outbursts of anti-Americanism, but patience is wearing thin and the strategic calculus is shifting. Donald Trump has already warned that he is willing to "walk away" from NATO altogether.

Others question ever more loudly exactly why the US should continue to guarantee the EU's eastern border against Vladimir Putin's Russia if Brussels is behaving in such an unfriendly fashion - and without the American security blanket a disarmed Europe is almost completely defenceless.  The EU needs to watch its step.’
Clearly this columnist sees the world purely in terms of power politics, and according to the bleak doctrine of the Survival of the Fittest. Actually Europe would no doubt enjoy a much better relationship with Russia, and President Putin would be less troublesome, if the USA pulled out. Certainly we need ‘defence’ by a President Donald Trump like a hole in the head.
Such concepts as social justice or equity or even consistency and coherence are mere will o’ the wisps to Mr E-P, or perhaps rather they are teleological doctrines or Caesaropapist (that’s a good one, but why not just Papist while he’s at it?) constructions. I had to look up that grand word teleological myself. Collins English Dictionary informs me that it derives from the Greek telos, meaning end, and teleology  is defined as for instance ‘The belief that certain phenomena are best explained in terms of purpose rather than cause.’
The one crowd who will certainly profit from all this are of course the lawyers. On the other hand, what we need to screw our politicians up to is the essential end of creating a fairer, more humanly flourishing world, rather than pandering to the mega-rich. I agree with this editorial in El Pais:-
‘La multa récord de 13.000 millones de euros impuesta a Apple por la Comisión Europea merece apoyo.

La política de defensa de la competencia, desarrollada con energía, ejemplifica no el capitalismo desregulado y neoliberal, sino la economía de mercado corregida por reglas de equidad económica, y de positivo efecto social.

La paralela queja de Dublín apelando a su soberanía nacional fiscal es asombrosa. No le basta con la fiscalidad societaria más leve y discriminatoria de la Unión: la rebaja hasta el 0,005%. Solo la Unión, y no los nacionalismos de Estado, puede combatir tales dislates. Así que para los asuntos de alcance global se necesita más UE y menos retórica soberanista.’

- ‘The record fine of 13 billion euro imposed on Apple by the European Commission deserves support.

-The policy of defending its competence with energy exemplifies, rather than deregulated and neoliberal capitalism, a market economy corrected by rules of economic equity, with positive social effects.

-The complaint of Dublin appealing to its national fiscal sovereignty is amazing. Not content with the lightest and most discriminatory corporate tax regime of the Union, they lower it to 0.005%. Only the Union, rather than State nationalisms, can combat such nonsense. So for matters on a global scale we need more EU and less rhetoric about national sovereignty.’

As I predicted, in the event of Brexit, Ireland is finding itself in a horrible tug-of-war. One can only  hope now that Scotland achieves independence, and together we may find a different voice for the people of these islands to that of the Tories and Trumpeters. At least the EU might be able to get on with its business properly without having to drag the UK along. Some clarity may be dawning, but I hate to see such a radical disjunction of perceptions in our midst!






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