George Handlery about the week that was. EU expansion: compromised principles and missed opportunities. Your UBS (Used to Be Smart), account privacy and the IRS (Infernal Revenue Service). Reaching out to the public – to take or to give. When is a minority in trouble? Progress against the will of the M&M (moronic majority). Keep quiet and postpone the problem until it becomes unsolvable.
 
1. The expansion of the EU results in the inclusion of countries that are not ready for membership. Geographically they might be European but in terms of their economic-political system they are not. Such inclusions – they contradict reason – imply the voluntary violation of officially avowed principles.
Some recent and currently envisioned future members are underdeveloped and often pre-industrial. In some instances they are derivates of (frequently Ottoman-inspired) cultures that are at variance with what characterizes advanced economies. The rule of law is, often not guaranteed in theory nor in terms of the values of the population. As a result, corruption can be a way of life and not only an occasional abuse. Meanwhile, criminality is rampant. In addition, the collective-rights of minorities are denied. The democracy exhibited to the outside world is as much a farce as “Socialist Democracy” used to be earlier. The admittance of central, eastern and Balkan European states should have been coupled to verifiably achieved – and not only to promised – standards. These should have been the convincingly pursued goals of those yielding power clearly committed to adjusting their system to the norms of advanced societies.
It is the great historical error of the enlargement process that, against all reason, it confused pious hope with applied policy. Much harm has been caused by the optimistic assumption that membership will result in reforms, instead of the other way around. With this, the cause of reform has been stymied. Now some of the chicken are about to come home to roost. Membership allows individuals to enter and settle anywhere in the Union. The official theory (used as a PC conform pacifier) is that the amount and kind of work available in the “rich West” will determine the size and the quality of the resulting immigration. It will soon become apparent that not the amount of gainful employment available, but the extent of welfare and the ease of getting access to it, will determine how many come and what they will do once arrived.
 
2. The case of the IRS (Infernal Revenue System) vs Switzerland is drawing new lines in the sand that only connoisseurs might have noticed. Switzerland’s bank secrecy that the IRS and the EU is now attacking, is a widely known hear-say and, therefore, equally widely misunderstood. This makes brief explanations, such as the one that is to follow, inherently difficult and in part inadequate.
Basically, Swiss national law distinguishes between tax fraud and tax evasion. In the former case privacy is not protected. If a concrete criminal case against an identified person is presented by an investigating foreign state against an account holder, his data will be communicated to the investigators. (Criminal violators will not be protected.) This action assumes that the charge to be substantiated by the requested data involves an act that is considered to be a crime in Switzerland as well as in the state requesting support in its move against an alleged violator. Global requests for information on the basis of generalized suspicions involving actions that are not a crime in Switzerland cannot be acted upon. In addition, Switzerland had an agreement (Qualified Intermediary) with the IRS. It determined that certain financial services and the ownership of certain stocks/funds shall not be made available to “US Persons” through Swiss banks.
To generate the kind of business that is rewarded by fat bonuses has made several high-ranked UBS representatives in the States (globally this bank is the largest manager of assets) to assist some clients to commit tax fraud against the USA. Furthermore, transactions were undertaken that were also disallowed by the Qualified Intermediary agreement. In doing so, besides US regulations, these UBS employees also broke Swiss national law and, additionally, they were in violation the bank’s internal regulations. The damage, whether expressed in reputation or by the punitive consequences (reimbursements to the US’ Treasury) is crushing. The shamed American operations of the UBS called for heads to roll. Additionally, the bank, admitting wrong doing in an American court, chose accordingly to cooperate with the US government. Beyond properly enforcing binding contracts, the IRS is exploiting the embarrassment and conducts a questionable attack to essentially nullify bank secrecy. Europe’s high taxing states are salivating while waiting to proceed through the breech to be created by the USA. Unveiled threats abound. In a fishing expedition, America is now demanding access to about 52,000 unidentified accounts held supposedly by US Persons. This, by the way, can be said to violate the spirit of recent agreements. They were concluded when the data regarding about 300 fraudulent clients has been turned over to the IRS.
 
3. Sometimes you hear that that someone is “reaching out” with the intent to get to his supporters and his election’s opposition. In such cases there is reason to suspect that what is extended to one side is an open grabbing hand diving in its pocket. At the same time, toward the other party a filled but open cookie-jar is held out.
 
4. To be a disadvantaged minority is not an enviable situation. However, let us not forget that often disliked minorities have bested the majority. Collectively, a minority is in deep trouble when it develops certain defensive verbal tools – probably with the connivance of a section of its surrounding majority. If this happens, such a group might manage with the help of this crutch to transmute all personal failures – such as not getting a position due to lacking qualifications – into a discriminating reaction to its identity. If this happens, the group will be locked in into underperformance and failure. (A case in point: there is a school system that offers skills to all. In some instances the minority refuses to participate in these programs as its leaders declare the offerings to be culturally alien to their followers. The result is under-qualification and the cultivation of skills for which there is no demand.)
 
5. Progress – the thought through improvement of our inheritance – is desirable but not inevitable. Much that is called progress is only change. (For the better, for the inconsequential and for the worse.) Some of this change goes back to alternatives that had been already bypassed and properly rejected. Success at the renewed implementation might serve some. However, it will not further the cause of mankind (ergo the reasons for earlier rejection/failure). Gradually improving mankind’s lot with its consent and corresponding to its freely articulated aspirations, requires time and demands patience. Many “progressives” tend to be snobbish as they view themselves as “leaders”. Therefore, they like to see themselves empowered to claim that they have no time wait. Consequently, they are not obligated to be restrained by the hard task of eliciting the consent of the morons not already in agreement with them.
 
6. Some of our morally empowered leaders by self proclamation, sell tempting propositions for the improvement of our well being and happiness. One of them is the social product’s distribution without general consent. This is coupled to a “just” order that distributes by relying to the distributor’s moral criteria, while individual performance and contribution are disregarded. Is this bad history? It is in the sense that such schemes dismiss experience and insights concerning human nature. Such proposals address themselves to the constituency of the under informed and attempt to re-run experiments that have already failed on account of their built-in errors.
 
7. Bad news. Good news. The failure of US – Iranian rapprochement as a result of Iran’s unwillingness to modify its nuclear development policy is, generally regarded as bad news. While not optimal, the development might not be worse possible scenario in case the West is willing to react by applying effective pressure. The really bad news would be if, to maintain the promise of “always negotiating”, a carteresque impression of calm would be artificially maintained. At least until Tehran has its bomb and the matching missile force.
 
8. Admittedly, the writer views some components of Israel’s settlement policies as mistaken. It would appear that, on this level, not the government makes policy but that the settlers do. Even so, we should keep in mind that Palestinian radicalism (such as in “erasing Israel”) expressed by the violent actions taken by its exponents, predates the “policy” of creating Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory.