The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Friday December 16th, 2022
The wicked duality of lobbies and bribes by Thanos Kalamidas
Despite to what a lot around Brussels might say, Qatar bribe scandal didn’t come as a surprise to anybody. Sad to say it but while the European Union founders used the US Capitol Hill as a blueprint on how to organize, legislate, operate and establish the Union’s legislative institutions in the end the only thing Brussels really adopted from US Capitol Hill has been the wicked duality of lobbying and bribes.
Lobbies are cancerous identities that have long eaten inside US legislature and obviously are doing good work in Europe as well. In Washington D.C. lobbying is legal and bribing can follow ‘legal’ pathways before ending to the right pockets or bank accounts, in Europe lobbying still lives in gray areas and Qatar case is the proof of it. Another dissimilarity between lobbies in Washington D.C. and Brussels is the powers behind the lobbies. Most of the lobbies in Washington have private interests and rarely states and foreign countries –Turkey to name one, in Europe things work vice versa; most of the time lobbies represent countries outside EU interests, -without that meaning that even EU member states don’t lobby through specialists inside EU institutions.
And yes while Qatar is in the talk at the moment, the strongest and biggest lobbying power in EU is …USA. just over two decades ago when the talk was about a European army, independent from NATO and the American weapons supermarket, totally dedicated in the defence of Europe and not the American interests abroad and armed with totally European arms in an effect to help the European industry, Americans went wild west. Rumours of bribes flew all over Brussels and other European capitals (mainly Paris and Berlin), while and totally coincidentally a lot of EU parliament members and members of the mighty commission found a way to visit USA for ….private reasons. Obviously a lot of them finding the streets of Washington D.C. far more entertaining than Riviera, Monte Carlo or Capri.
Continue reading HERE!
Blind Politics #poem by Dr. Lawrence Nannery
“We were watching the TV, Louie and me,
He’s blind, so he don’t even stare at the thing. He only half listens.
Me, I do the translating. I tell him what the pictures show.
We been doing this for years; it’s like making love, though don’t get me wrong.”
Continue reading HERE
Berserk Alert! #033 #cartoon by Tony Zuvela
For more Berserk Alert!, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!
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