Could you name a few?
Comment on Surprise EU rollback of 'GDPR' digital-rights rules prompts alarm
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Looks like somebody has been promised a very highly paid non-executive board membership, millionaire speech circuit engagement or gold plated “consulting” gig when their time in the Commission is over…
Mind you, by now that’s just tradition for the members of the EU Commission.
ptu@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Legally there are no Corrupt EU Commissioners. To be deemed Corrupt there would have to be actual evidence of Corruption (such as recordings of meetings were they explicitly promised to use their power in a certain way, in exchange for some form of payment, which normally only the Police has powers to obtain), them being subsequently charged and a Court Of Law convicting them for the crime of Corruption.
None of them was ever just investigated for Corruption, much less convicted.
So if I was to name names, I would be putting my head of the block for Libel, which in my country (which by the way, is pretty Corrupt, with actual ex-government members convicted of Corruption) is an actual Crime prosecuted by the local Prosecution Office, not merely a civil lawsuit for damages.
What there is are various coincidences of EU Commissioners which acted in very positive ways towards certain industries and then after leaving the Commission went to work for those Industries making a lot of money even thought they had no background in them (never before had worked in said Industries, no Educational training for said Industries).
Since the police never investigates it, all there are are such amazing coincidences if commissioners ending up in gold plated gigs in the industries they helped whilst they were commissioners.
I’m not going to put my head of the nose for you by naming names (I’m not a Legal expert so don’t want to risk committing the Crime of Libel by doing so). I suggest you start by looking into were the EU commissioners during the 2008 Crash (during which the commission was very pro-Finance) ended up working afterwards.
ptu@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
I didn’t ask for ”corrupt comissioners”, but those who have moved from comission to those positions. There is nothing illegal in pointing those out.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Well, for merely commissioners that moved from the commission to those positions, the first example that comes to my mind is the head of the EU Commission during the 2008 Crash and it’s aftermath, who went to Goldman Sachs afterwards and is still there today.
During his time in the Commission they were very pro-Finance in the way they handled the aftermath of the Crash with him personally pushing frequently for measures which unconditionally helped those companies.
There’s even a scandal with him were, whilst working at Goldman Sachs, he broke the EU rules on lobbying by using his access card to EU buildings - which he was entitled to have as an ex-Head of the Commission - to simply enter into those buildings and waltz over to the offices of sitting EU officials to lobby for Goldman Sachs. The EU ended up revoking his access privileges, the first and only time that has happened for an ex-EU Commissioner.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 week ago
So if I was to name names, I would be putting my head of the block for the Crime of Libel.
“Hello I’m an anonymous person on the Internet and if I say anyone’s name I will literally be murdered, so you just need to Do Your Own Research”
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
I personally know a person who was charged and convicted of the Crime or Libel (in what for my country was an incredibly speedy legal process) for accusing a local politician of Corruption.
Curiously, about a decade later said politician was convicted for Corruption.
Libel having been made a Crime in my country (which is quite unusual in the World) was done exactly so that people can be punished for openly accusing the powerful of malfeasance without the powerful having to bare the costs for a civil court case and actually prove damages (so it mainly helps politicians in the big parties who have the connections to get the local Public Prosecutions Office to take the case to court) and that’s exactly how it has been used.
By an amazing coincidence my country is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe and last I checked was the one most behind in implementing the EU advised anti-Corruption measures.
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Humanity really can’t progress anywhere with capitalism running so rampant. Every corpo needs to go, or it will be like trying to sail against the wind.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
True.
That is however a pretty hard and time consuming change, so to me it makes sense that in the meanwhile we take steps to reduce the harm caused by the system still in place, not least by cracking down hard on Corruption and Conflicts Of Interest and closing the legal loopholes that allow certain politicians to stay within the Law whilst purposefully using today the power they have been delegated to do favors for others who have promised them monetary payback for it tomorrow.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
that’s not to say we lose sight of the goal though!
people have made a similar mistake multiple times before!
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 1 week ago
Humanity is progressing all the time one way or another. Also corporation is a word with far wider meaning than often used, a university is a corporation, a security service is a corporation, a military is a corporation with plenty of subcorporations with their own esprit de corps, and even a network of friends playing DND is a corporation, not even talking about religious sects.
And all these corporations function, in regards to cronyism and and quid-pro-quo and silent erosion of mechanisms aimed at transparency and resilience, in absolutely the same way.
So - even in this interpretation there were people agreeing with you, which are now called “not proper communism”, who have ruined all the corporations they could find, have built their own one corporation aimed at first taking power and then fixing the world, it has diverged in a few directions, fostering under their umbrella a few other corporations along the way, and in the end result the territories which those people controlled are still pretty corporate. Except with very peculiar backbones of their organized crime, with traits of a religious sect, which can be traced back to those revolutionaries. There are even a few secret services which have been abolished or merged into other secret services, but in fact still function and their members elect their leaders. It’s scary, ironic, even beautiful, and honestly I respect those people who can keep a tradition even if membership in their structure has nothing to do with money and power anymore.
But you should notice how when trying to build a social mechanism to impose your will upon the world, like, for example, to kill all corporations, you are building a corporation.
I’ve used more words than needed to say this.
architect@thelemmy.club 6 days ago
You’re right. We are past capitalism at this point imo, though. They don’t need employees at all to extract “value” from the rest of us. They are like digital kings. We pay them to be on their lands. You should see the amount of money they extract from some of us just to be allowed to play. I pay them more than all of my bills combined to be allowed eyes in their digital fiefdom.
Do it or starve. That is the reality for a lot of us. Maybe not you, yet. (If you’re lucky enough to have a job that doesn’t need the internet)