Cream Antique Bedroom Furniture Artenzo .
Cream Antique Bedroom Furniture Nice Ideas #8 Bedroom Decor Vintage Antique Bedroom Furniture With Cream Colors .
Full Size Of Bedroom:magnificent Antique Bedroom Furniture Cream Bedroom Furniture Image Of Fresh In Large Size Of Bedroom:magnificent Antique Bedroom .
Cream Bedroom Antique White Bedroom Furniture .
This blog post of Cream Antique Bedroom Furniture was posted at September 18, 2018 at 5:55 pm. This image is published in the Bedroom category. Cream Antique Bedroom Furniture is tagged with Cream Antique Bedroom Furniture, Cream, Antique, Bedroom, Furniture..
So that it seems cozy and fairly crucial that you give consideration building the livingroom. The warm Cream Antique Bedroom Furniture is likely to make friends, the visitors, or relatives who come to visit to experience at home. If you could spend some time chatting using them in this space, in addition to the good effect that you could, wouldn't be great? Planning interior design living by selecting a right couch, room you can start models.
Collection of loving you and a suitable fit, will assist the looks of a family area. Style that is couch can you pick should match using the design moved from the household itself. If your contemporary family room full of chairs contemporary and minimalist Cream Antique Bedroom Furniture might appear weird. Contemporary feeling would be stronger radiated should you select a chair that has carvings and other facts that are traditional.
You utilize to read textbooks or just besides getting used a family area frequently, for interesting visitors. A chair that's a slick style can support the overall look of the area. However, the design have to be in step with the convenience provided. We recommend so that you can obtain the style you like, that you simply avoid excessively limiting comfort.
There are various possibilities slick layout that now offers ease as possible select pills. Consequently, do not be happy with one solution only. Again, do not desire to purchase a fit for good style alone. As well as the design, you should seat Cream Antique Bedroom Furniture must be attained first.
Driving the living room increases as being a family room, you should consider whether the item is durable if occupied constantly if your residence is small. You can observe to the product along with the layout, once your needs are satisfied. Is recommended to select era not a design that is not concentrated by era. Thus, even though craze transformed, visitor chairs will not produce bored or seems outdated.
There are numerous selections of materials that you can choose. Beginning with one piece of timber to wood or material body lined with textile and foam multifaceted. Lumber will improve the perception if placed in the area modern classic style. Nonetheless, request of wood in a minimalist modern place may put in a hot natural atmosphere.


Burrishoole Abbey, a 15th Century Dominican friary, is located on a tidal inlet (lagoon) on the north side of Clew Bay, Co Mayo. Burrishoole Friary was a Dominican friary in County Mayo, Ireland. Its ruin is a National Monument.
Burrishoole Friary was founded in 1470 by Richard de Burgo of Turlough, Lord MacWilliam Oughter. It was built without the permission of the Pope. In 1486, the Pope instructed the Archbishop of Tuam to forgive the Friars. Richard de Burgo resigned his lordship in 1469 and entered the friary he had founded where he remained a friar until his death four years later. This was not an uncommon occurrence and serves to illustrate the connection between patrons and their foundations at this time.
The church and the eastern wall of the cloister remain. The grounds of the Friary are an actively used cemetery. Burrishoole Friary is a few kilometers west of the town of Newport, County Mayo, Ireland. It is often called Burrishoole Abbey, however, this colloquial name is inaccurate as the Dominican order did not have abbots, therefore Dominican houses are not technically abbeys. Almost all the friaries and abbeys across Ireland were suppressed in the wake of the Reformation in the 16th century. Very few were rebuilt after that time and now only the ruins survive, pleasing, if poignant, late Gothic relics of what must have been among the most striking buildings in the countryside of pre-Tudor Ireland.
These pictures show some of the fishing boats at Lough Cullen,Pontoon, Co. Mayo. Also some links, chains and up close shots to get a different look.
Lough Conn joins Lough Cullen at lovely Pontoon, which is famous for its salmon pool at Pontoon Bridge. Tucked away under the shadow of Nephin Mountains and surrounded by forests and sandy beaches and bays, Lough Conn extends nine miles from north to south and varies in width from two to six miles.
Trout fishing on Lough Cullen generally starts around the 17th March with the trout feeding voraciously on freshwater shrimp, snails and hoglice. Given some mild weather, large chironomids, colloquially known as duckfly appear. Trout feed on all stages of duckfly hatches.
Mayflies start appearing around the end of April and, from then to the end of June, some exciting fishing can be had. All Mayfly patterns fished wet work well and some excellend sport can be enjoyed with dry patterns. From 1st July to the end of the season, very little fishing is carried out on Cullen because of the weed and algae growth due to enrichment.
These pictures I took in Pontoon Co. Mayo show the beautiful Nephin Mountain from the shores of Loch Conn. Some of them are taken behind the Pontoon Bridge Hotel, and some along the shore of the lake. It was a beautiful day with a blue sky and nice big clouds.
Windmills / wind turbines in Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo. They are on a raised site with some television mast and amazing view of Croagh Patrick and the surrounding areas in Co. Mayo. Along with the windmills there are a number of bogs up the hills / mountains for turf cutting.


text:
Smart Meetings Magazine Platinum Choice Award logo provided by Destination Niagara USA.
Destination Niagara USA awarded 2022 Platinum Choice Award by Smart Meetings Magazine
Destination Niagara USA, the official destination marketing organization for Niagara County, has been recognized by Smart Meetings Magazine with a Platinum Choice Award for 2022.
A press release said, "Smart Meetings sets the industry standard for the best venues and destinations for meeting professionals, and the award highlights Destination Niagara USA for providing the highest standards of overall excellence in service.
"To determine this honor, industry professionals and Smart Meetings readers cast their votes, and the editorial team selects final honorees."
Niagara President and CEO John Percy said, "The team of professionals at Destination Niagara USA and the Niagara Falls Convention Center work closely with key hospitality partners in the region to ensure meeting planners receive top-notch support as they organize an event, and the service continues as they help to facilitate the best possible experience for attendees in the destination."
Destination Niagara USA assumed management of the Niagara Falls Convention Center in January.
"2022 has been a successful year in terms of the return of in-person meetings, and being selected to receive a Platinum Choice Award from Smart Meetings is an exciting confirmation of the excellence we strive for at Destination Niagara USA," Percy said.
The Niagara Falls Convention Center hosted 77 events in 2022, creating total building revenue of more than $3 million, and having an estimated economic impact of more than $10.7 million.
The mission of Destination Niagara USA is to expand the economic prosperity of the Niagara Falls USA communities by generating individual and group visitation. For more information, visit niagarafallsusa.com.
Business Sentinel Tribune Tribune HP Feature List

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


For decades, PRMG emergency physicians have cared for patients with incredibly complex and challenging medical problems, the types of problems that would be reserved for specialists in a larger metropolitan hospital. But here in Ukiah, where our specialists are limited, PRMG providers rise to the challenge and care for patients who have nowhere else to turn. "You can't just be good to practice medicine here. You have to be really good," said PRMG CEO Debbie Marks, MD.
In addition to the medical complexity of the patients, PRMG providers work in an emergency department built to care for far fewer patients. Instead of telling patients they'll just have to wait, PRMG providers see as many patients as possible at any given time. The average patient who visits the UVMC Emergency Department spends a total of two hours at the hospital, from arrival to discharge. In many urban settings, patients sit in the waiting room for two hours or more before they are even seen.
In 2008, when it was clear UVMC needed dedicated providers to manage the broad range of hospitalized patients' medical issues, PRMG started an inpatient hospitalist service. This team has received a five-star quality rating from Medicare and provides continuity of care from the Emergency Department to the hospital floor.
PRMG opened the Community Foundation's first corporate-advised fund. It is similar to other donor-advised funds, with the corporation providing seed money to start the fund and paying the annual management fee. After that, the fund is based solely on employee donations. Although donating to the Pacific Redwood Medical Group Charitable Fund is entirely voluntary, most of the 18 full-time employees have opted to contribute monthly.
This is precisely what the Community Foundation is uniquely designed to achieve, and we're thrilled to be working with PRMG to help them meet their charitable goals in our community.


text:
/*
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except
 * in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License
 * is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express
 * or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under
 * the License.
 */
/*
 * This code was generated by https://github.com/googleapis/google-api-java-client-services/
 * Modify at your own risk.
 */

package com.google.api.services.vision.v1.model;

/**
 * The Google Cloud Storage location where the input will be read from.
 *
 *
 This is the Java data model class that specifies how to parse/serialize into the JSON that is
 * transmitted over HTTP when working with the Cloud Vision API. For a detailed explanation see:
 * https://developers.google.com/api-client-library/java/google-http-java-client/json
 *

 *
 * @author Google, Inc.
 */
@SuppressWarnings("javadoc")
public final class GoogleCloudVisionV1p4beta1GcsSource extends com.google.api.client.json.GenericJson {

  /**
   * Google Cloud Storage URI for the input file. This must only be a Google Cloud Storage object.
   * Wildcards are not currently supported.
   * The value may be {@code null}.
   */
  @com.google.api.client.util.Key
  private java.lang.String uri;

  /**
   * Google Cloud Storage URI for the input file. This must only be a Google Cloud Storage object.
   * Wildcards are not currently supported.
   * @return value or {@code null} for none
   */
  public java.lang.String getUri() {
    return uri;
  }

  /**
   * Google Cloud Storage URI for the input file. This must only be a Google Cloud Storage object.
   * Wildcards are not currently supported.
   * @param uri uri or {@code null} for none
   */
  public GoogleCloudVisionV1p4beta1GcsSource setUri(java.lang.String uri) {
    this.uri = uri;
    return this;
  }

  @Override
  public GoogleCloudVisionV1p4beta1GcsSource set(String fieldName, Object value) {
    return (GoogleCloudVisionV1p4beta1GcsSource) super.set(fieldName, value);
  }

  @Override
  public GoogleCloudVisionV1p4beta1GcsSource clone() {
    return (GoogleCloudVisionV1p4beta1GcsSource) super.clone();
  }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Alabama practice report: Notes on QBs as Wisconsin prep nears
Published: Aug. 26, 2015, 8:44 p.m.
Michael Casagrande | mcasagrande@al.com
The weather was immaculate for a second straight day of Alabama football practice.
They're still in the window between the official preseason camp and Wisconsin preparations. That will begin later in the week since Alabama doesn't typically start much sooner than an average game week. The idea is to avoid over-preparation.
Here's what we saw Wednesday:
-- All eyes remain on the quarterbacks. There wasn't much to read from the order of throwers in the two periods open to reporters Thursday.
-- Each of the five QBs competing were dead on target throwing the quick slants. (There aren't defenders involved in any of the drills during media viewing).
-- Throwing deeper across the middle, Alec Morris had the only over-throw, but it was slight. He came right back with a perfect throw to Calvin Ridley.
-- Overall, the passing accuracy was as good as it's looked from our viewing periods.
-- Oregon State transfer WR Richard Mullaney made a night one-handed catch across the middle.
-- The two receivers groups have been swapping sides of the field after each drill. It would appear that would give them more work with the full assortment of receivers. In the past, each of the two lines would remain on one side of the field.
-- Right tackle Dominick Jackson continued to look fine after hurting his shoulder in the scrimmage Saturday. Brandon Greene remains his backup with Bradley Bozeman working at right guard on the second team behind Alphonse Taylor.
-- Nick Saban will meet with reporters after Thursday's practice.


LA Sports Management LLC is a Sports Management and Marketing company specializing in the branding, promotion, and digital management of professional athletes. Our proactive approach is to build an athlete's personal brand through innovative marketing strategies. We leverage a media platform that delivers results by connecting our clients directly to their fan base, the media and sponsors.
LA Sports Management offers a wide range of marketing services including branding, consulting, editorial, event planning, graphic design, web development, public relations, social media and college promotion services. We have extensive experience working with professional athletes, including many of today's top stars.
LA Sports Management provides creative public relations programs that are specifically tailored for each athlete. We have designed a powerful visibility program that creates brand buzz in all forms of media. Our public relations packages are the best way to build an athlete's brand with an experienced team leading the way.
We provide full management and representation services to elite amateur and professional athletes. Our unique approach allows our clients to concentrate on their sport and pursue excellence on and off the field. Our team of certified professionals consists of sports management experts, career management consultants, financial advisors, lawyers, trainers, nutritionists, and sports psychologists.


Paolo survives parents — Paolo M. Mottola Jr.
A few weeks back, I documented (and to some controversy) on Jeanna's blog how nervous I was feeling about Amanda's parents coming to stay with us. The gag reflex to parents is natural, right?
Roger and Sheree left after a 10-day stint and I survived SURPRISINGLY unscathed. As I expected, everything was TERRIBLE!
They made several dinners for us and bought groceries. UGH! They fixed everything in the house and painted the kitchen! HOW AWFUL! They PUT UP with Sergio's late night antics. WHAT PRUDES! They seemed to wholeheartedly enjoy themselves and even said that. BLASPHEMY!
I mean LOOK at these people. Do you SEE how MEAN they can be?
For some ODD reason, the whole experience actually wasn't all that bad.


U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he was looking forward to trade talks with China on Thursday, as discussions in Beijing moved to a higher level in a push to de-escalate a tariff war ahead of a March 1 deadline for a deal.
The talks, scheduled to run through Friday, follow three days of deputy-level meetings to work out technical details, including a mechanism for enforcing any trade agreement. "Looking forward to discussions today," Mnuchin told reporters without elaborating as he left his hotel.
He and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer opened the meetings shortly afterward at the Diaoyutai state guest house with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, the top economic adviser to Chinese President Xi Jinping. U.S. tariffs on $200 billion worth of imports from China are scheduled to rise to 25 percent from 10 percent if the two sides don't reach a deal by the deadline, increasing pressure and costs in sectors from consumer electronics to agriculture.
U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday that the negotiations had been progressing "very well". Trump's advisors have described March 1 as a "hard deadline", and the president has said a delay was possible though he preferred not to do so.
A Bloomberg report cited sources saying Trump was considering pushing back the deadline by 60 days to give negotiators more time. Countering that, Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of China's nationalist Global Times tabloid, tweeted that speculation on an extension was "inaccurate", citing a source close to talks.
Trump has said he did not expect to meet with Xi prior to March 1, but White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders has raised the possibility of a meeting between the leaders at the president's personal retreat at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Secretary Stephen Censky said on Wednesday that the two presidents were expected to meet "sometime in March," but no dates were set.
'TESTED BY THE TRADE WAR' The Chinese government has offered few details about the state of negotiations this week.
Chinese trade data released on Thursday showed imports from the United States fell 41.2 percent from a year earlier to $9.24 billion, the lowest amount in dollar terms since February 2016. Exports to the United States also declined 2.4 percent to $36.54 billion, the lowest amount since April 2018.
China's trade surplus with the United States narrowed to $27.3 billion in January, from $29.87 billion in December. China's soybean imports fell 13 percent in January from a year earlier, customs data showed, as a hefty duty on shipments from the United States, its second largest supplier, curbed purchases.
The United States has used tariffs as leverage to demand Beijing make major structural policy changes, including ending the forced transfer of American technology, fully enforcing intellectual property rights, and curbing industrial subsidies. But China has denied accusations of trade abuses. While Chinese officials have repeatedly pledged to improve market access for foreign investors, few experts expect Beijing to agree to anything that would force fundamental changes to what Washington complains is its state-led approach to trade.


Goodmorning bloggers, check out the great sale i just started today. It will knock you off your surfboard for sure. lol Every item in my store is 25% off, so don't be shy stop by and take a look. I hope everyone is having a great morning, i sure am. Working in my studio creating new designs, and of course way too much coffee. Hope you all have a successful day and sell lots.
Previous Post Surfsupstudios: Rare and unique jewelry.
Next Post Rainy day sale.


European integration has long had an enhancing effect on Europe's national democracies. In addition to meeting its initial commitments to peace and prosperity, the European Union has generated policies to address problems that national governments cannot resolve effectively on their own in an increasingly globalized world. However, while deepening European integration has benefited the member states of the European Union in countless ways, it has also had some unanticipated side effects on their national democracies.
As decision-making in policy area after policy area has moved up to the EU level, European integration has increasingly encroached on issues at the very heart of national sovereignty and identity. Money and monetary policy, economic organization and labor markets, borders and immigration, public services and even welfare guarantees all increasingly come under EU policies or prescriptions. The problem for national democracies is not so much that EU policies have encroached on national ones, however, but that citizens have had little direct say over these matters, let alone engagement in EU-wide political debates about the policies. The fragmented nature of European "democracy" has meant that while the policies are decided at the EU level, generally in an apolitical or technocratic manner, politics remains national. National democracies as a result have increasingly become the domain of "politics without policy" whereas the EU level appears as "policy without politics" 1 — however "political" (or politically charged) the policies may actually be, in particular in the Eurozone crisis.
As national citizens have had less and less direct influence over the policies that affect them the most, they have expressed their concerns at the only level at which they are able: the national. Citizens have increasingly made their displeasure known through protests and the ballot box, leading to the rise of the populist extremes and the increasing turnover of sitting governments. National governments, moreover, have found themselves caught more and more between citizens' electoral expectations and the EU's collectively agreed rules and decisions.
As a result, national governments confront dual challenges: from populism at the national level and from technocracy at the EU level. But technocracy is itself a creature of the governments themselves. As member states in coordinated intergovernmental EU agreements, they have increasingly delegated implementation and oversight powers to supranational authorities, such as the EU Commission, the European Central Bank, and a proliferating number of regulatory agencies. Again, although pooling their authority to delegate responsibility may have been the best way to meet the global challenges, it has also further reduced governments' national margins of manoeuver, in particular with regard to the demands of large numbers of their own citizens.
The Eurozone crisis has made such matters worse not only because of the politics and economics of hard times, but also because of the EU's economic policies and governance processes in response to the crisis. These have only intensified the democratic challenges for citizens and their governments alike, as more and more decisions have been taken through EU level intergovernmental coordination and supranational delegation. 2 Citizens have felt their diminished influence all the more acutely, resulting in a precipitous loss of trust in both their national governments and in the EU, which has also manifested itself in even greater political volatility.
Note, however, that the impact of the EU, in particular in the Eurozone crisis, has been highly differentiated. Not only have citizens' reactions to the EU and the Eurozone crisis been very different across the member states, but national democracies have also had very different experiences of the EU and the Eurozone crisis. While some national democracies have been greatly undermined, others have been empowered. Greece under the latest bailout agreement is arguably the most extreme example of the hollowing out of national democracy, whereas Germany—given both its position on the Council and the role of its Constitutional Court in vetting EU legislation—has arguably been best able to ring-fence its own national democracy.
The question for the EU, then, is how can it manage to recapture the hearts and minds of all of its citizens across its member states? And how can it rebalance EU decision-making to make it more generally democratic? The question for national governments is, how can they retain enough control to satisfy the demands of national democracy without undermining the goals of European integration?
European integration has, all in all, been a major boon for the EU's member state democracies. Integration has enabled the comparatively small countries of Europe to stand together as a supranational region, thereby giving them international scale and scope. It has equally enabled them to stand up to the challenges of economic globalization in an increasingly interdependent and competitive world economic system, by regionalizing their economies through a single market and a common currency. But the very integration processes that have served to enhance the substantive quality of member states' democracies, by giving them peace and prosperity at home along with extra heft as a regional power and economic authority in the international arena, have at the same time impoverished the procedural quality and political dynamics of their democracies.
European integration has been a democratically negotiated process among member states, as they slowly and incrementally pooled sovereignty, shared authority, and created joint control in policy area after policy area and institution after institution. The customs union was followed by the Single Market, Schengen, and European Monetary Union (EMU); the Court of Justice of the EU (ECJ) gained supremacy and direct effect; the European Central Bank (ECB) was given control over money, monetary policy, and banks most recently; and the Commission increased its supranational powers of negotiation, regulation and oversight in areas such as international trade negotiation, financial markets, and the EMU via the European Semester for budgetary oversight.
The reduction of national democracy has been an inadvertent byproduct of such increasing integration, as more and more decisions are taken at the EU level rather than the national. This has thereby emptied national democratic politics of substance without at the same time creating a fully democratic body politic at the EU level as a replacement.
The lack of citizen access to EU decision-making has only marginally been remedied by the incremental rise over time in the powers of the European Parliament (EP) as the direct voice of the people, in particular through its increasing influence via co-decision procedures with the Council and Commission and by measures for direct citizen access, such as the EU ombudsman and the citizen's initiative petition. In the case of the EP, any claims that it is the most representative of EU bodies because of its members' direct election "by the people" are weakened by the high levels of abstention in EP elections and the second order nature of such elections. 3 Moreover, in the Eurozone crisis, any such claims to representativeness are additionally weakened by the fact that the EP has had by treaty very little remit in EMU governance, although this changed somewhat over the course of the crisis.
Additionally, assuming that the Council serves as a representative forum fails to deal with the fact that during the Eurozone crisis, it acted initially more as a bargaining arena in which one member state (Germany) exercised the greatest influence. Although academic scholarship on the Council has suggested that the deliberative mode prevails over hard bargaining, even where qualified majority voting occurs, because of the focus on consensus, 8 in the Eurozone crisis, deliberation has occurred in the shadow of Germany. 9 In the months leading up to the May 2010 bailout of Greece, Germany, as the strongest economically and the most opposed to taking a decision, ensured that no decision could be taken, given the unanimity rule, until Chancellor Merkel finally agreed in order to "save the euro." 10 Germany's predominance has manifested itself not only through that country's sway in the Council decision-making process, but also in coordination with coalitional allies. It has also been evident through German leaders' ability to determine the analysis of the Eurozone crisis and set the terms for the response.
Despite the reality of a crisis that resulted from an explosion of private debt and a structure of the euro that had produced increasing divergences rather than the expected convergence between countries, 11 the crisis was framed as one of public debt rather than private—by reading off the Greek case—and diagnosed as behavioral rather than structural, from not following the rules, which was again only true for Greece (and Germany and France, in the mid 2000s). As a result, the remedies all focused on "governing by the rules and ruling by the numbers," 12 that is, on reinforcing the rules and more strictly specifying the numbers through the various legislative packages and intergovernmental pacts (Six-Pack, Two-Pack, and Fiscal Compact), while increasing budgetary oversight through the Commission-led process known as the "European Semester." EU leaders in the European Council spent their time agreeing to restrictive rules and sanctions, rather than finding lasting solutions to the incomplete risk pool and insurance mechanism that constituted EMU and that had been put in place more by default than design. 13 What was in fact needed was greater solidarity through some form of mutualization of debt (e.g., Eurobonds) or macroeconomic stabilizers (e.g., an EU-wide unemployment fund). 14 But Germany was adamantly opposed to any such "transfer union" from the very start.
Finally, Germany's over-sized influence in the EU also stems from the features of its own national democracy, in which the Constitutional Court has played a major role in deciding what is democratically legitimate for Germany and the EU. The Court has thereby served as another power resource for German leaders, who frequently invoked the Constitutional Court to delay decisions, as they did with regard to bailing out Greece. But more importantly, the German Constitutional Court has also inserted itself repeatedly into EU matters, most notably with its hearings on the ECB's "unorthodox" monetary policies, in particular with regard to "OMT" (open monetary transactions) through which ECB President Draghi had promised to "do whatever it takes" to save the euro in July 2012, which had stopped market attacks on member state debt. Such judicial activism is in and of itself perfectly appropriate by the standards of national democracies. But it is problematic for EU governance at the very least in terms of its efficiency: What if all member states' constitutional courts were to do the same? 15 Most significant here regarding our concerns is that the German Constitutional Court is the only national court to assert its right to vet such EU decisions, with the effect of casting uncertainty on those decisions.
Members of the European Parliament voting during a session on September 2015.
The problem for the EU is that without a fully developed "government" similar to that of national democracies, EU citizens are unable to aggregate their concerns and demands in such a way as to express their will directly at the EU level. There are naturally good reasons for why this would neither be feasible nor particularly "democratic" in the EU up until today. Such reasons have been discussed and debated at length, including the lack of a European demos, a sense of common citizenship and identity, or even a single public sphere. 16 More recently, the scholarly conversation has shifted to seeing the potential for EU democracy more positively, as being made up of overlapping public spheres 17 and consisting of demoi, which would therefore be capable of constituting an EU demoicracy 18 or creating a "European Republic." 19 But for the moment, the EU is far from any supranational democratic reality. Importantly, even were there to be any such supranational government, we would still need to consider questions of national democracy, in particular with regard to how the member states' national democracies would fare within any such supranational democracy.
Be this as it may, in the current context, we can nevertheless discuss the democratic qualities of the EU. This is because the EU does have a range of "governance" (rather than government) processes with multi-level representation and coordination that ensures that it stands up to many of the tests of democratic legitimacy even in the absence of a democracy similar to that found at the national level. Three such tests or legitimizing mechanisms are theorized in the EU studies literature.
The third test encompasses what I call the "throughput" quality of the EU's governance processes, judged by their efficacy, accountability, transparency, and inclusiveness. Here, there is no trade-off with input or output legitimacy: Where the quality of the throughput processes is good, they are not noticed by the average citizen, but where the quality is bad, they can skew public perceptions of input responsiveness or taint views of output results. 21 Notably, during the Eurozone crisis, questions have arisen on all sides about the quality of governance by the ECB, the Commission, and/or the Council.
Beyond these questions of EU level output and throughput legitimacy are ones related to input legitimacy. They are situated in particular at the intersection of EU democracy with its member states' national democracies, especially in the midst of the Eurozone crisis. The increase in the Council's intergovernmental decision-making that centralized power in the hands of member state executives, however necessary at the height of the crisis, worked to the detriment of the more input legitimate co-decision making with the European Parliament. It also cut off the throughput legitimacy that comes with greater transparency in decision-making as well as with greater inclusiveness, by closing off access to pluralist processes through the EP or the Commission for citizens operating in cross-national as well as national interest groups and social movements. Moreover, the increase in supranational governance through Commission oversight of national governments' budgets in the European Semester—which the Commission vets even before national parliaments have had a chance to comment—has reduced a key component contributing to national parliaments' input legitimacy.
The most significant problem for national democracies subordinated to the EU's supranational governance system, however, is that the EU does not have the main constitutive component of national democracies' input legitimacy. National elections bring in new majorities that are able to alter the rules, or even rescind them. This is not the case in the EU, where treaty change is very difficult if there is no consensus among the twenty-eight member states, given the unanimity rule as well as the fact that some member states are required to hold national referenda.
In national democratic polities, when economic prosperity plummets and policies go awry, we generally assume that citizens will elect new political leaders with mandates for policy change in the expectation that both the politics and the economics will improve. Not so in the European Union (EU), where citizen dissatisfaction with EU governance of the Eurozone crisis can do and has done little to change the policies forged at the EU level. Whether citizens express their concerns through protest or votes, including voting out national governments and voting in Eurosceptic parties on the political extremes, they have had little impact on EU level decision-making. And because EU decision-making is itself largely apolitical and technocratic, it also serves to undermine national party government, which is political and normative.
The problem for national democracies is that the EU has actually unsettled the balance between the two main functions of national level political parties in their relations with their constituents. Increasingly over time, European integration has forced parties to privilege responsibility over representation, by enhancing their governing role to the detriment of their responsiveness to national electorates. 23 Responsibility without responsiveness alienates the citizens, while responsiveness to the detriment of responsibility puts national governments at odds with the EU rules and at risk of sanctions. The pressures to be responsible affect not only the sitting governments that agreed to the policies but also the opposition parties that may have campaigned against the very policies that they will be expected to implement when they gain office, even against "the will of the people." The result is a step-change in member states' commitment to responsible government, to the detriment of responsive government, leading to the "politics of constrained choice." 24 In consequence, even as national electorates clamor for more domestic input into the decisions that affect their lives, governments are forced to implement decisions that emanate from the EU, which may not be in tune with domestic perceptions of the policies that they believe would produce good and appropriate results.
To understand fully what this means, we need to consider the fragmented nature of EU multi-level democracy taken as a whole, in which politics remains primarily at the national level while policy has increasingly gone to the EU level. Put another way, the national level has increasingly become characterized by "politics without policy" as more and more policies are removed from the national arena. This has thereby emptied national politics of substance, impoverishing the national political arena and leaving the way open to populist contestation. At this same time, the EU level consists of "policy without politics." Member state leaders in the Council tend to eschew the language of the left or the right when speaking of their national interests, the EU Commission uses the language of technocracy, and the EP, if not left out of the game entirely, uses the language of the public interest. 25 This makes for depoliticized EU policy debates that use primarily technical arguments that do not resonate with European citizens, who are used to the left/right divides of national debates, often worry about EU policies on left/right grounds, and expect normative arguments that resonate with national values and political concerns.
Such apolitical or technocratic language and discourse enable member state leaders to cast their nationally focused discussions of EU policies in whatever way they deem appropriate for their domestic political audiences. 26 The fact that member state leaders' references to the EU often take the form of blame-shifting ("the EU made me do it") or credit-taking (without mentioning the role of the EU) only increases problems with regard to public perceptions of the EU. And it feeds into populist discourse about the EU being responsible for all national problems, together with the national politicians who go along with EU demands.
One important contributing element to the crisis of mainstream national party politics has come from this increasing predominance of technocracy to the detriment of national party politics. As more and more seemingly depoliticized EU level technocratic decisions have become national policy, without real debate or significant involvement of national parliaments, national party politics and indeed national democracy has weakened. Definitions of democracy based on party politics assume that political parties will provide both political mediation—by aggregating and articulating competing conceptions of the common good—and a procedural framework expressive of the constitutive values of democracy, including the principles of parliamentary deliberation, the rules of decision-making, and the recognition of the legitimacy of opposition. 29 EU level technocracy, by sidelining both national mediation and deliberation, thereby weakens national party democracy.
An even greater concern is that ever-increasing technocracy plus ever-weakening mainstream party politics have together fuelled the rise of populism. Populists' main target is mainstream party politics, which they accuse of being run by self-serving and corrupt elites that have no interest in "the people." The irony is that technocracy also has as its target mainstream party politics, seen as inefficient and rent seeking (read corrupt). Technocracy and populism are very different things. But the danger of technocracy is that too much of it undermines mainstream, party-based representative politics while increasing support for the populists. 30 And too much populism can lead to the destabilization of democracy.
The end result is the increasing political volatility that comes from citizens' sense that their preferences—whether expressed through the ballot box, social concertation processes, or social activism—don't count. 31 Citizens have been punishing their national politicians with growing frequency and intensity, resulting in the increasing turnover of sitting governments 32. Political volatility has become the rule not only in the periphery but also in the core—in particular since the Eurozone crisis. France is a case in point—President Sarkozy was only the second president in the Fifth Republic not to have won a second term; President Hollande has had the lowest popularity rating of any president of the Fifth Republic (down to 12 percent in November 2014—although back up to a still very low 20% by April 2015). Governments are generally more fragile and often on a knife's edge with regard to their majorities, while mainstream parties have been having more and more difficulty forming a government—as was the case of the Italian elections of February 2013. Even more problematic for the EU is the possibility that more anti-democratic or "illiberal" governments will also emerge, as in Hungary. There are worrying signs even short of this, however, with the rise of far right extremist parties, such as the neo-Nazi party, Golden Dawn, in Greece, with 9% of the vote in the June 2012 elections, and still above 7% in the September 2015 election.
Increasing Euroscepticism or even anti-European—and not just anti-euro—feeling is part and parcel of the political volatility that only intensified with the continuing Eurozone crisis. The "sleeping giant" of EU-related party divisions and Euroscepticism, long predicted by analysts, has finally awakened. 33 We can see this not just in the growing divisions over the EU within mainstream parties but even more significantly in the rise of extremist parties. These include not only hard right extremes but also the less extreme populists on the right (e.g., the National Front in France, Geert Wilders' party in the Netherlands), on the left (e.g., Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain), and in what we could call the less easily classified "radical center" (e.g., the Five Star Movement in Italy, the AfD in Germany, and even UKIP in the UK). Notably, such parties can be found not only in the countries hardest hit by the crisis, in Southern and Eastern Europe, but also in those largely unaffected by the crisis economically, mainly in Northern Europe. This includes Scandinavia 34—with the True Finns' breakthrough in the 2011 Finnish elections, the Sweden Democrats' in the September 2014 elections, and the Danish Peoples Party's historic gain in the June 2015 election, becoming the second largest party in the country, and precipitating the collapse of the center-left government. Even Germany, which had seemed vaccinated against the extreme right, saw the meteoric rise of the AfD (Alternative for Germany) in 2014, along with an anti-immigrant extremist movement, Pegida.
The results of the European Parliament elections were also a sign of the rise of Euroscepticism, in particular with the victories of Marine Le Pen's FN in France and Nigel Farage's UKIP in the UK—although Prime Minister Renzi's massive 40% victory for the social democrats of the Democratic Party (PD) in the Italian contest (a first in the postwar history of Italy) suggests that there is hope for centrist parties whose leaders promise to make national views heard at the EU level as well as to make national democracy work better.
Only in late 2014 was there an uptick in public views, with trust in the EU jumping 6 points, to 37% in fall 2014, and trust in national governments up 6 points as well, to 29% in fall 2014. 42 This may be the result of a sense that the EU is finally turning the corner economically, that politics does matter, with the greater politicization of the debates in the European Council among political leaders around flexibility and in the EP with the elections, or that the policies may change, given the ECB announcement of quantitative easing and anticipation of the arrival of a new Commission promising investment and growth. That said, it could just be a blip in the opinion polls.
Meanwhile, the unions find that all they can do is agree to concessions while gaining nothing in return, as in the Spanish pension agreement and the Irish Croke Park deal. At the same time, all that the most social movements like the Spanish indignados have managed to do is to mobilize members for protests and demonstrations that get them nothing other than, sometimes, news coverage 46—although in certain instances this has led to the creation of new political parties, most notably Podemos and Syriza. Repression of such movements is also an issue, however. The Council of Europe (2013) criticized EU member state governments for sidestepping regular channels of participation and social dialogue on the pretext of national financial emergency, with harsh responses against demonstrators and infringements of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, as well as reductions in media freedom, in particular in public outlets.
Complacency would be a mistake in the face of the rise of the populist extremes. Extremist parties don't simply go away when times get better—as the experience of the boom years of the early and mid 2000s demonstrate. Once populism takes hold, it is not easy to dislodge. The extreme right populist parties that thrived in the 2000s on identity politics focused on anti-immigrant issues and the EU have simply added skepticism about the Euro to its list of complaints. Moreover, with the fall 2015 crisis resulting from the massive flows of refugees and immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East, the populist parties on the extreme right, in particular, have continued to thrive on an issue that they have long exploited to build support.
Populism should not be seen as a totally negative phenomenon, however, since it can have certain positive effects, such as giving voice to underrepresented groups, mobilizing and representing excluded sections of society, and increasing democratic accountability by raising issues ignored or pushed aside by the mainstream parties. 47 The extremes on the left in particular, by mobilizing on the basis of social justice and human rights as well as against the inequalities caused by the increasing predominance of financial capitalism and its accompanying booms and busts, or by the lack of progressive taxation, can serve as a positive pull on mainstream parties, on the right as much as the left. However, there are many fewer extreme left parties with a significant popular following (with the exception of Greece and Spain) than extreme right parties. And these are the parties that appear to have exerted the most influence in political debates so far, by pulling center right mainstream parties closer to their positions, especially with regard to opposition to immigration and freedom of movement or minority rights. On the left, moreover, the rise of left-leaning extremism has put center left parties in a quandary—to move left, thereby challenging EU level agreements, or to resist any leftward move, thereby weakening governing majorities or losing support from part of their traditional electorate. In addition, the potential victory of one of the populist anti-EU parties in national elections in the next few years could be highly problematic not only for the country in question—especially if it were a coalition with an extreme right party that would seek to implement its discriminatory or anti-EU views—but also for the EU, given decision rules that give individual member states veto power over treaties.
The only possible signs of light with regard to populist parties have been Greece's Syriza and Spain's Podemos, which look set to become those countries' new center-left parties in place of the moribund Greek Socialist party PASOK and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). What has made these new parties credible to large portions of the electorate is not only that they have engaged openly with difficult questions about the distribution costs of fiscal consolidation. It is also the fact that their initial exclusion from power has put them in a good position to deliver a radical critique of the rent-seeking behavior of mainstream party, state and technocratic elites. Rather than worrying that these new parties may prove intractable, we should recognize that they could actually be the ones to bring real renewal to their countries' politics as well as to generate citizen-friendly structural reforms focused on reducing corruption, improving tax collection, and promoting social justice.
With the electoral victories of Syriza to national office and Podemos to local office (most notably to the office of mayor of Madrid), these parties' ability to deliver on their promises will be put to the test. For the moment, however, it is too early to say what effect they will have, although the protracted negotiations of Syriza with the EU on a new debt package suggest that the government tried, and failed, to change both the Eurozone policy narrative and the agenda. This brings us back to the relations of power within the EU and, in this case, the Council of Eurozone Ministers, where Germany—with coalitional allies, in this case Central and Eastern European countries, such as the Baltic states and Slovakia, in addition to Finland and the Netherlands—again dominated.
The main question for Syriza will be whether it manages to become a credible political party able to deliver policies while keeping its promises, thereby fraying the difficult path between being responsible by credibly implementing the bailout agreement and being responsive to the concerns of its citizens. In other words, will Syriza be able to bring much needed reforms to the country in the domain of anti-corruption efforts, strengthen state administrative capacity, collect taxes, and pull Greece out its economic depression despite the continued austerity demanded by the Eurozone leaders and consecrated by the bailout package that they signed? The new elections in September 2015 that brought back to power a Syriza now stripped of some of its most radical elements has at least given Prime Minister Tsipras a mandate to implement the program—something he did not have when he was elected in February 2015 with promises to end the austerity program.
With the exception of Greece, however, to see populism as potentially returning party politics to its proper place in the EU is the optimistic view. The pessimistic view is that the decline of traditional party politics, already evident beginning in the 1990s, continues apace, and with it the growing political volatility related to the increasing mediatization of politics that enables populist parties to thrive. 50 And at the EU level, the pessimistic view is that gridlock takes hold, with no new consensus on how to reform and with continued differences in preferences between core and periphery. Moreover, if the extremes on the Eurosceptic right come into coalition governments in one or more member states, all bets are off in terms of forward movement in EU and Eurozone governance, with deleterious effects all around.
Conclusion: What Future for Europe and National Democracies?
Over time, citizens have come to perceive the EU as more and more remote (read technocratic) and national governments as less and less responsive to their concerns, in particular in the midst of the Eurozone crisis. This has translated not only into a growing loss of trust in the EU and national governments but also to ever more volatile national politics, with the growth of populism. Mainstream parties and party politics have been weakening, and incumbent governments have increasingly been voted out of office as extremist parties with anti-euro and anti-EU messages have gained attention, votes, and even seats in both national parliaments and the EP. What is more, the loss of trust is also increasingly found between countries, including especially Northern versus Southern Europe with the Eurozone crisis, and then Central and Eastern Europe with the North against the South in the latest Greek crisis—although this mix has shifted with the current migrant crisis, which has seemingly pitted the CEECs and the UK against the rest.
This said, the EU has not affected all national democracies in the same ways. While some countries have largely maintained or even enhanced their democratic powers and practices, others have seen their democratic powers diminished, their democratic practices hollowed out—in particular in countries subject to adjustment programs associated with bailouts. The differences are most pronounced between Germany and Greece. Germany has been able to ring-fence its national democracy while promoting its preferences for the Eurozone rules, while its more active Constitutional Court has also time and again vetted EU legislation when concerned to safeguard German democratic standards. In contrast, Greek governments have seemingly exchanged democratic autonomy for economic solvency, as successive governments have become more responsible for policy while giving up on responsiveness to citizens' needs and demands, culminating in the agreement of the extreme left party, Syriza, to do the same.
The question for the EU today is therefore how to reinvigorate national democracy across Europe while rebalancing the EU's "democracy" in ways that enable both EU and national levels to interact productively within the new EU realities. For this, mainstream party politics at both national and EU levels require strengthening and rebooting in order to confront two very different enemies: technocracy and populism.
The EU myth has long been that it does best during moments of crisis, when it engineers great leaps forward into deeper forms of integration that solve the existential problems that beset it at the moment. This time may be different (if the myth was ever true). 51 In the Eurozone crisis, rather than resolving the crisis with good (output legitimate) results, the EU may have prolonged it through rules-based governance processes and policies focused on austerity and structural reform. This has also created serious problems for national input legitimacy, by leaving national governments more torn than ever between their responsibility to honor EU agreements and their responsiveness to citizens, which only further feeds citizen disaffection. Such technocratic fixes—which in the Eurozone crisis have meant doubling down on the (throughput) rules—have only fueled the rise of populism, to the detriment of mainstream national politics and democracy.
So what can be done? At the very least, the EU needs a reset in terms of policies and processes—arguably with more responsibility for policies to be decentralized to the national level in order to ensure greater responsiveness to citizens while at the same time ensuring continued EU level coordination. But for this, as for the many other initiatives that are required, the EU would first need leaders with a new vision and a new narrative about what the EU is, what it should be doing, and where it should be going. For the moment, such leaders are lacking.
Armingeon, K. and L. Baccaro. 2013. "The Sorrows of the Young Euro: Policy Responses to the Sovereign Debt Crisis." In Coping with Crisis, edited by Nancy Bermeo and Jonas Pontusson. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Barbier, Jean-Claude 2008. La Longue Marche vers l'Europe Sociale. Paris: PUF.
Bickerton, Christopher and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti. 2015. "Populism and Technocracy: Opposites or Complements?" Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy. DOI:10.1080/13698230.2014.995504.
Blyth, M. 2013. Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bosco, A. and S. Verney. 2012. "Electoral Epidemic." South European Society and Politics 17(2): 129-154.
Claessens, Stijn, Ashoka Mody, and Shahin Vallee. 2012. "Paths to Eurobonds." Bruegel Working Paper 2012/10. Available at http://www.bruegel.org/publications/publication-detail/publication/733-paths-to-eurobonds/.
Collignon, Stefan 2004. Vive la République Européenne. Paris: Edition de la Martinière.
and Macroeconomic Stability in the Eurozone." Journal of Common Market Studies, 50/6: 866-880.
De Grauwe, Paul 2013. "The Political Economy of the Euro." Annual Review of Political Science 16:153-70.
Dehousse, Renaud 2011. "Are EU Legislative Procedures Truly Democratic?" Paper presented at the Harvard University Center for European Studies. Boston, March, 2.
Dehousse, Renaud 2015. "The New Supranationalism." Paper prepared for presentation at the Council for European Studies Annual Conference. Paris, July, 8-10.
Enderlein, H. et al. 2012. Completing the Euro—A road map towards fiscal union in Europe. Report of the Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa Group. Notre Europe Study 92. Available at http://www.notre-europe.eu/media/completingtheeuroreportpadoa-schioppagroupnejune2012.pdf?pdf=ok.
Eurostat 2015. "Unemployment Statistics." Available at http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Unemployment_statistics&oldid=232726.
Fabbrini, Sergio. 2013. "Intergovernmentalism and its limits: Assessing the European Union's Answer to the Euro Crisis." Comparative Political Studies 46(9): 1003-1029.
Gamble, A. 2013. "Neo-Liberalism and fiscal conservatism." In Resilient Liberalism: European Political Economy through Boom and Bust, edited by V. A. Schmidt and M. Thatcher. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Gómez-Reino, Margarita and Iván LLamazares. 2013. "The Populist Radical Right and European Integration: A Comparative Analysis of Party-Voter Links." West European Politics 36(4): 789-816.
Grimm, Dieter. 1997. "Does Europe Need a Constitution?" In The Question of Europe, edited by P. Gowan and P. Anderson. London: Verso.
Hobolt, Sara B. and Cristopher Wratil. 2015. "Public Opinion and the Crisis: The Dynamics of Support for the Euro." Journal of European Public Policy 22(2): 238-56.
Jacoby, W., forthcoming in 2015. "The Timing of Politics and the Politics of Timing." In The Future of the Euro, edited by M. Matthijs, and M. Blyth. New York: Oxford University Press.
Jones, Erik 2015. "Forgotten Financial Union: How You Can Have a Euro Crisis without a Euro." In The Future of the Euro, edited by Mark Blyth and Matthias Matthijs. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hanspeter, Kriesi, and Edgar Grande, forthcoming in 2015. "Political Debate in a Polarizing Union." In Democratic Politics in a European Union under Stress, edited by O. Cramme, and S. Hobolt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kriesi, Hanspeter 2014. "The Populist Challenge." West European Politics 37(2): 379-99.
Kriesi, Hanspeter, Edgar Grande, and Robert Lachat. 2008. West European Politics in the Age of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kriesi, Hanspeter, Edgar Grande, Martin Dolezal, Marc Helbling Dominic Höglinger, Swen Hutter, and Bruno Wueest. 2012. Political conflict in Western Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Laffan, B. 2014. "Testing Times: The Growing Primacy of Responsibility in the Euro Area." West European Politics 37(2): 270-287.
Mair, P. 2013. "Smaghi vs. the Parties: Representative Government and Institutional Constraints." In Politics in the Age of Austerity, edited by A. Schäfer, and W. Streeck, Cambridge: Polity.
Mair, Peter and Thomassen J. 2010. "Political representation and government in the European Union." European Journal of Public Policy 17: 2035.
Majone, G. 1998. "Europe's Democratic Deficit." European Law Journal 4(1): 5-28.
Mudde, Cas and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2012. Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat or Corrective to Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nicolaïdis, Kalypso. 2013. "European Demoicracy and its Crisis." Journal of Common Market Studies 51(2): 351-369.
Novak, S. 2010. "Decision rules, social norms and the expression of disagreement." Social Science Information. 49(1): 83–97.
Parsons, Craig and Matthias Matthijs. 2015. "European Integration Past, Present and Future: Moving Forward through Crisis?" In The Future of the Euro, edited by Matthias Matthijs and Mark Blyth. New York: Oxford University Press.
Puetter, U. 2012. "Europe's Deliberative Intergovernmentalism." Journal of European Public Policy 19(2):161–178.
Risse, Thomas. 2010. A Community of Europeans? Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Risse, Thomas. ed. 2015. European Public Spheres. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sauerbrey, Anna. 2015. "European Political Poke." International New York Times. August, 10. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/opinion/anna-sauerbrey-european-political-poker.html?_r=0.
Scharpf, F. W. 2013. "Monetary Union, Fiscal Crisis and the Disabling of Democratic Accountability." In Politics in the Age of Austerity, edited by A. Schäfer, and W. Streeck. Cambridge: Polity.
Schelkle, W., forthcoming in 2015. "The Insurance Potential of a Non-Optimum Currency Area." In Democratic Politics in a European Union under Stress, edited by O. Cramme, and S. Hobolt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schmidt, Vivien A. 2009. "Re-Envisioning the European Union: Identity, Democracy, Economy." Journal of Common Market Studies, 47 Annual Review (2009): 17-42.
Schmidt, Vivien A. 2015b. "Changing the policies, politics, and processes of the Eurozone in crisis: Will this time be different?" In Social Developments in the EU 2015, edited by David Natali and Bart Vanhercke. Brussels: European Social Observatory (OSE) and European Trade Union Institute (ETUI).
Schmidt, Vivien A. and Woll, C. 2013. "The State: Bête Noire of Neo-Liberalism or its Greatest Conquest?" In Resilient Liberalism, edited by V. A. Schmidt and M. Thatcher. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Taggart, P. and A. Szczerbiak. 2013. "Coming in from the Cold? Euroscepticism, Government Participation and Party Positions on Europe." Journal of Common Market Studies 51(1):17-37.
Usherwood, Simon, and Nick Startin. 2013. "Euroscepticism as a Persistent Phenomenon." Journal of Common Market Studies 51(1): 1-16.
Van der Eijk, C. and Franklin, M. 2007. "The Sleeping Giant." In European Elections and Domestic Politics, edited by W. Van der Brug and C. Van der Eijk. Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press 189-208.
Weiler, J. H. H. 1995. "The State 'uber alles.'" Demos, Telos and the German Maastricht Decision." Jean Monnet Working Paper Series 6/95. Cambridge: Harvard Law School.
1 See Schmidt 2006, Ch. 1, 4.
2 Fabbrini 2013; Dehousse 2015.
3 Franklin, and van der Eijk 2007.
5 In a speech in Toulon (Dec. 1, 2011).
6 In a speech at the College of Europe in Bruges (Nov. 2, 2010).
7 Scharpf 2013, pp. 138-9.
8 In a speech in Toulon (Dec. 1, 2011).
9 Novak 2010, Puetter 2012.
10 See Schmidt 2015a; Jacoby 2015.
11 Schelkle, 2015; Jones, 2015.
12 See, e.g., De Grauwe and Ji 2012; Enderlein et al. 2012; De Grauwe 2013; Blyth 2013.
13 Schelkle 2015; Jones 2015.
14 Claessens et al. 2012.
16 En particular, Weiler, 1995 and Grimm, 1997.
20 Scharpf 1999; Majone 1998.
22 But see Schmidt 2015b.
23 Mair, 2013; Mair and Tomlinson, 2011.
26 Schmidt, 2006; J-C Barbier, 2008.
27 Gamble 2013; Schmidt and Woll 2013.
29 Bickerton e Invernizzi Accetti, 2015.
30 Bickerton and Invernizzi Accetti 2015.
32 Bosco et al., 2012.
33 Franklin and Van der Eijk 2007.
34 Aggart, and Szczerbiak 2013; Usherwood, and Startin 2013.
35 Gómez-Reino and Lamazares 2013.
36 Kriesi and Grande, 2015.
37 Kriesi et al., 2008.
38 Kriesi et al., 2012; Kriesi, 2014.
40 Eurobarometer EB 8241 Hobolt y Wratil, 2015.
41 Eurobarometer EB 78, Dec. 2012.
42 Eurobarometer EB 82, 2015.
43 Pew Survey, May 2013.
44 Gallup poll, Sept. 2013 http://www.scribd.com/doc/172138343/Gallup-Debating-Europe-Poll-Austerity-Policies.
45 Hobolt and Wratil 2015.
46 Armingeon and Baccaro 2013.
47 Mudde and Kaltwasser 2012.
49 Financial Times, June 15, 2015.
51 See Matthijs and Parsons 2015.
Schmidt, Vivien Ann. "The Impact of European Integration on National Democracies: Democracy at Increasing Risk in the Eurozone Crisis." In The Search for Europe. Contrasting Approaches. Madrid: BBVA, 2015.


text:
Milly Dowler police knew of phone hacking claims
The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann™ :: British Police / Government Interference :: Leveson Inquiry / Murdoch Empire
24 April 2013 Last updated at 10:51
Surrey Police were aware of allegations of murdered
schoolgirl Milly Dowler's phone being hacked, but failed to investigate, a
watchdog has said.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission said there was knowledge of the
allegations "at all levels" of the 2002 investigation into Milly's murder.
The IPCC said senior officers had "collective amnesia" during its probe.
Surrey Police said it should have revisited the phone hacking allegations
after the murder investigation.
Re: Milly Dowler police knew of phone hacking claims
Selective memory, how conveniant, what is annoying is they get away with it.
Timeline of voice mails
http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/GNM-Timeline-regarding-Milly-Dowlers-Voicemail.pdf
Milly Dowler: truth about deletion of messages may never be known
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/09/milly-dowler-deletion-messages
IMO What's to say the Police didn't hack into the phone/deleting, or may have been working with others to find the missing girl?
Milly Dowler murder: Levi Bellfield admits killing


text:
L. Douste-Blazy
Citations3,666
H. Chap
R. Salvayre
S. Gatt
L. van Deenen
[Vicissitudes of a vitamin; folic acid].
P. Valdiguie, L. Douste-Blazy
Toulouse medical
Asymmetric distribution of arachidonic acid in the plasma membrane of human platelets. A determination using purified phospholipases and a rapid method for membrane isolation.
B. Perret, H. Chap, L. Douste-Blazy
Biochimica et biophysica acta
1. Non-lytic degradation of human platelet phospholipids have been performed using a combination of bee venom phospholipase A2 (phosphatide 2-acyl-hydrolase, EC 3.1.1.4) and Staphylococcus aureus… Expand
Phosphatidic and lysophosphatidic acid production in phospholipase C-and thrombin-treated platelets. Possible involvement of a platelet lipase.
G. Mauco, H. Chap, M. Simon, L. Douste-Blazy
Incubation of 32P-labelled platelets with Clostridium welchii phospholipase C greatly stimulates 32P-incorporation into phosphatidic and lysophosphatidic acids. A net synthesis is demonstrated for… Expand
Réaction de libération plaquettaire induite par la phospholipase C
H. Chap, L. Douste-Blazy
Human washed-platelet suspensions are incubated with 7.5 μg/ml (final concentration) of phospholipase C from Clostridium welchii for 0 to 5 min. The enzyme is previously heated for 12 min at 56°C in… Expand
Distribution of high-density lipoprotein 2 and 3 constituents during in vitro phospholipid hydrolysis.
B. Perret, F. Chollet, S. Durand, G. Simard, H. Chap, L. Douste-Blazy
European journal of biochemistry
Human high-density lipoproteins HDL2 (d = 1.068-1.125) and HDL3 (d = 1.125-1.210) doubly labelled with [3H]cholesterol/cholesteryl ester and with [acyl-14C]phosphatidylcholine were further incubated… Expand
A new human pathology with visceral accumulation of long-chain n-alkanes; tissue distribution of the stored compounds and pathophysiological hypotheses.
R. Salvayre, A. Negre, +6 authors L. Douste-Blazy
This report deals with a new human disorder characterized by the accumulation of plant long-chain n-alkanes in viscera of a human patient. Lipid analysis of tissues from an adult male after sudden… Expand
Carrier-mediated choline uptake by Krebs II ascites cells.
G. Ribbes, M. Hamza, H. Chap, L. Douste-Blazy
Krebs II ascites cells have a low affinity uptake system for choline (Km = 36 microM, Vm = 76 nmol/min per 2 X 10(8). Choline entered the cells and was rapidly phosphorylated (95% of total… Expand
Lymphoid cell lines as a model system for the study of Wolman's disease: Enzymatic, metabolic and ultrastructural investigations
A. Negre, R. Salvayre, +5 authors L. Douste-Blazy
Journal of Inherited Metabolic Disease
Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) transformed lymphoid cell lines (LCL) were established from blood lymphocytes of a patient affected with Wolman's disease (WD) and from her parents. These LCL showed a severe… Expand
Studies on ether phospholipids. II. Comparative composition of various tissues from human, rat and guinea pig.
A. Diagne, J. Fauvel, M. Record, H. Chap, L. Douste-Blazy
The ether phospholipid composition of various tissues (brain, heart, lung, liver, kidney, testis, erythrocytes and plasma) has been investigated in human, rat and guinea pig, using a new method of… Expand
Modification of subunit interaction in membrane‐bound acid β‐glucosidase from Gaucher disease
A. Maret, M. Potier, R. Salvayre, L. Douste-Blazy
The radiation inactivation method has been used to determine the molecular mass of membrane‐bound acid β‐glucosidase (EC 3.2.1.21) in situ, in normal human spleen and in that of two patients with… Expand


Hitch it: Fabulous, retro-styled art with a tightly controlled palette. This comic has a tremendous visual appeal. And the dated look of the comic makes the edgy content that much edgier. I really like the way this comic looks. I'd like to encourage Erik to kick the Web design up a few notches so that it's on-par with the visual appeal of the comic. Right now that comic deserves a much better-looking site.


text:
Abrams v. American Fidelity Cas. Co.
Insurance Co. v. Cassinelli
We must place this case in the same category as others not containing the covenants here involved. In…
Hanover Insurance Co. v. Carroll
The promptness of the claim is a matter of degree in any event, and a rule which permits the insurer to show…
Full title:PAUL ABRAMS, Respondent, v. AMERICAN FIDELITY CASUALTY CO., Appellant
Date published: Jul 27, 1948
195 P.2d 797 (Cal. 1948)
In Fidelity there had been an agreement between the insurers that a settlement of the original action would be without prejudice to any right which the settling insurer had against the coinsurer; but the question of whether this created an equitable right of subrogation (or effectually an equitable estoppel) was not discussed in the opinion and apparently was not even raised.
Summary of this case from Wasson v. Atlantic National Ins. Co.
Docket No. L.A. 20495.
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County. Harold B. Jeffery, Judge. Affirmed.
Reginald I. Bauder and Robert E. Ford for Appellant.
Forrest A. Betts, Chase, Rotchford, Downen Chase, Crider, Runkle Tilson, Jones, Thompson Kelly, Kenneth Murphy and Lasher B. Gallagher, as Amici Curiae on behalf of Appellant.
Charles A. Son and Joseph D. Taylor for Respondent.
In April, 1941, plaintiff recovered judgment against one A. Visser for bodily injuries received as the result of the alleged negligent operation of a truck by Visser. On the date of the accident Visser was insured by defendant in the instant case, American Fidelity and Casualty Co., against liability arising out of the operation of the truck. The judgment against Visser became final and was not satisfied, and plaintiff, in December, 1941, instituted this action against defendant insurer to recover on the insurance policy and the judgment. (See Ins. Code, § 11580, subd. (b) (2).) The insurer defended on the ground that Visser failed to give it prompt notice of the accident as assertedly required by the policy, the trial court rendered judgment in plaintiff's favor, and defendant insurer appeals. We have concluded that upon the evidence presented, the judgment must be affirmed.
Ins. Code, § 11580, subd. (b) (2), "A policy insuring against losses [of the type involved here] . . . whether or not actually containing such provisions, shall be construed as if [it embodied provisions including] . . . (b) . . . (2) A provision that whenever judgment is secured against the insured in an action brought by the injured person . . . then an action may be brought against the insurer, on the policy and subject to its terms and limitations, by such judgment creditor to recover on the judgment."
See provisions of policy, infra.
The accident in which plaintiff was injured occurred on December 25, 1940, in the state of Utah, while Visser, the operator of the truck causing the injuries, was in that state on a business trip. Visser's truck collided with a sedan plaintiff was driving. The following day Visser mailed to one Fred Kerr, Gardena, California, "an insurance broker employed by Mr. Visser to secure" the liability policy issued by defendant insurer, a post card which reads as follows: "Dec. 25. Dear Mr. Kerr: I had an accident this morning 14 miles north of Beaver, Utah on Hi-way 91. Please inquire at the Sher riffs office in Beaver Utah for all particulars. My policy number is No. 36803. I remain as ever A Visser." Kerr telegraphed to the office of the sheriff in Beaver, asking for a collect reply telegram giving details of Visser's accident, but failed to receive a reply. Visser returned to California from Utah during the latter part of January, 1941, and Kerr then learned for the first time that the accident had involved another person, who might claim damages from Visser. Kerr thereupon, by a letter dated January 31, 1941, notified the insurer's Los Angeles office of the fact, date and place of the collision and of plaintiff's name. The letter reached the insurer on February 4, forty-one days after the accident occurred, and was the first notice received by it concerning the accident.
The subject policy contains the following provisions as to notice to defendant insurer in case of accident: "Upon the occurrence of an accident or an alleged accident, covered under this Policy, the Assured shall give immediate written notice thereof with the most complete detailed information obtainable at the time to the Company, at its Home Office in Richmond, Virginia, or to its nearest Branch Office or to its duly authorized agent; if a claim is made on account of such an accident or if any suit is brought against the Assured to enforce such a claim the Assured shall forward to the Company immediately every written communication, or information as to any verbal communication, and every process, pleading and paper relating to any claim and/or proceeding. The words `Immediate' or `Immediately' as used herein shall be construed to mean not exceeding five days."
[1a] Defendant insurer concedes that that portion of the quoted policy provisions which purports to require notice to it within five days after an accident is violative of section 551 of the Insurance Code. That section reads as follows: "Except in the case of life, marine, or fire insurance, notice of an accident, injury, or death may be given at any time within twenty days after the event, to the insurer under a policy against loss therefrom. In such a policy, no requirement of notice within a lesser period shall be valid." Plaintiff contends that inasmuch as the five-day notice provision of the policy is void, there remains in the policy no requirement that the assured give defendant insurer any notice whatsoever of the accident. Defendant, on its part, urges that although it cannot rely upon the policy's five-day notice requirement, the twenty-day period provided in section 551 must be read into and adopted as part of the policy. In this connection defendant cites Coolidge v. Standard Acc. Ins. Co. (1931), 114 Cal.App. 716, 721 [ 300 P. 885], in which the court stated that "Under section 2633a of the Civil Code [now Ins. Code, § 551], the provisions of an insurance policy which require an assured to immediately notify the company of the occurrence of an accident, will be deemed to have been sufficiently complied with if the notice is actually given within twenty days from the happening of the casualty." However, the policy involved in the Coolidge case contained no provision defining "immediately" to mean either "not exceeding five days" or any other particular period of time, and consequently the sentence quoted from that opinion is not persuasive here. Moreover, neither the statute nor the insurance policy involved in the instant case states that the twenty-day statutory period shall become a part of a policy which contains an invalid requirement of notice within a shorter period. The omission of the statute in this respect is in direct contrast to the express provision of section 11580, heretofore quoted in part in footnote 1. [2] Generally speaking, provisions tending to defeat the main object of the contract are not to be implied. (See 29 Am.Jur. 180 et seq., § 166.) Likewise, while a requirement for notice can be made a condition precedent to recovery, in which event, in the absence of waiver or estoppel, failure of the insured to give the notice may defeat recovery on the policy ( Aronson v. Frankfort etc. Ins. Co. (1908), 9 Cal.App. 473 [ 99 P. 537]; see also 29 Am. Jur. 828, § 1105), it is also said that unless such a requirement "is made a condition precedent or a forfeiture is provided for, the failure to give notice . . . will not defeat recovery." (29 Am.Jur. 825, § 1100.) [1b] Under the circumstances defendant's contention that the statutory minimum period shall be deemed written into the policy in place of the void provision to constitute a condition precedent or basis for forfeiture will not be indulged.
[3] Defendant next contends that even if the statutory notice period is not adopted into the policy, the policy still requires that the insured give "immediate written notice" of any accident covered by the policy; that since the policy's definition of "immediate" as meaning "not exceeding five days" is void the expression "immediate" notice must be construed to mean notice within a reasonable time; that the forty-one day period which elapsed between the accident here involved and the receipt of notice thereof by defendant was so unreasonably long as to constitute prejudicial delay to defendant as a matter of law; and that therefore the judgment in plaintiff's favor must be reversed. It is our view, however, that even though we assume, without deciding, that the policy issued by defendant to Visser required notice within a reasonable time after an accident, nevertheless the delay of forty-one days which occurred here was not so great that the trial court was precluded from finding as a fact, as the court did, that defendant was not prejudiced thereby; i.e., the court was not required to conclude as a matter of law that prejudice resulted. The finding of the court is that "the defendant was not prejudiced by any delay on the part of the assured in giving notice of the happening of said accident; that the witnesses to the happening of said accident were only the parties involved and the defendant secured written statements as to the facts of said accident from them within twenty days of receipt of said notice; that on account of conditions at the time and place of the accident there were no road marks indicating the circumstances under which said accident happened; that the defendant was informed of all of the material facts of the claim made by the plaintiff on A. Visser within such a length of time after the happening of the accident that the defendant was not prejudiced in the defense of said action by reason of the failure of said A. Visser to give an earlier notice."
Defendant urges that the finding that "defendant secured written statements" from the "witnesses within twenty days of receipt of" notice of the accident is "false." Evidence introduced is to the effect that the only witness, aside from plaintiff and Visser, was one Heber Thacker, who was riding as a helper in Visser's truck, and that within twenty days after receiving the notice defendant had in its possession either the original or copies of statements made by plaintiff, Visser and Thacker concerning the accident; consequently defendant's attack on the finding as to statements obtained by it cannot be sustained. No other attack is made on the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the findings of the court.
Defendant next urges that the cases of Hynding v. Home Acc. Ins. Co. (1932), 214 Cal. 743, 752 [ 7 P.2d 999, 85 A.L.R. 13]; Burbank v. National Casualty Co. (1936), 15 Cal.App.2d 483, 486-487 [ 59 P.2d 589]; Burbank v. National Casualty Co. (1941), 43 Cal.App.2d 773, 781-782 [ 111 P.2d 740]; Purefoy v. Pacific Automobile Indem. Exch. (1935), 5 Cal.2d 81, 88 [ 53 P.2d 155]; Distributors P. Co. v. Pacific I. Co. (1937), 21 Cal.App.2d 505, 509 [ 70 P.2d 253]; and Arthur v. London Guar. Acc. Co. (1947), 78 Cal.App.2d 198, 201 [ 177 P.2d 625], have established that in this state the forty-one days' delay in notifying it of the accident conclusively prejudiced it in any defense to plaintiff's action against Visser.
In the Hynding case the insured breached a cooperation clause of the policy by failing to attend and testify at the trial of the action brought against him by the injured person, and such breach was held to prejudice defendant insurance company and relieve it from liability under the policy. In both of the Burbank cases the statutory twenty-day notice provision applied and was breached by the insured; moreover in neither of those two cases did the court find, as it has found in the instant case, that defendant insurer was not prejudiced by the delay in receiving notice of the accident. In the Purefoy case three and one-half months elapsed before the insurer learned of the accident (and then only from the attorney of the injured persons) and fifteen months elapsed before the insured communicated with the insurer; the trial court found that the delay prejudiced the insurer and rendered judgment for the insurer which this court affirmed. Although in our opinion we stated (p. 88 of 5 Cal.2d) "that prejudice must be presumed in such situations," that statement must be understood as having reference to the facts of that particular case, the real basis for the decision being our statement in the preceding paragraph (p. 87) "that prejudice sufficiently appeared, and the court below so found." Certainly we made no suggestion, and none must be implied, that such a presumption or inference is a conclusive one which cannot be overcome by evidence that no actual prejudice occurred. The ultimate conclusion in each case must depend on its own facts. In the instant case pertinent evidence was introduced and the trial court, acting within the compass of its functions, found that no prejudice resulted.
In the Arthur case the opinion recites (p. 201 of 78 Cal.App. 2 d), that the insurer "established" that by reason of an eleven months' delay in notifying it of the accident, it was "unable to make an effective investigation of the accident and was thereby prevented from discovering the two men who were riding" in one of the vehicles involved "at the time of the collision." The action of the trial court in granting the insurer's motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict against it was, on the record then before the court (there being apparently no conflict in the evidence), upheld on appeal.
We hold that where, as here, there is no valid contractual agreement requiring notice within a specific (other than a reasonable) period and the trial court finds, upon sufficient evidence, that a forty-one day delay in notifying the insurer concerning an accident did not prejudice it in defending an action against the insured arising out of the accident, such finding will not be disturbed on appeal. Any implications which may be found to the contrary in Distributors P. Co. v. Pacific I. Co. (1937), supra, 21 Cal.App.2d 505, 509, are disapproved.
Gibson, C.J., Shenk, J., Edmonds, J., Carter, J., Traynor, J., and Spence, J., concurred.


James Woods has been locked out of his Twitter account because of a meme he shared months ago, in July. Twitter informed Woods that the meme violated the company's rules. The conservative actor has publicly claimed the move violates his freedom of speech.
This is the tweet @RealJamesWoods was locked for.
Wouldn't it be ironic if the "Streisand Effect" kicked in and it was retweeted 10,000 times?
Twitter told Woods that he could access his account again if he first deleted the offending tweet. Woods has refused to delete the tweet on principle and said that he would not compromise his principles in order to be allowed back on the social media platform.
Woods complained that the decision to lock him out of his account was based on the reach of his Twitter audience. He has 1.73 million followers. He said that his girlfriend who also shared the meme was not punished by Twitter.
Woods is a rare Trump supporter in Hollywood. He has recently tweeted criticism and mocking tweets of Christine Blasey Ford who has publicly detailed a sexual assault she experienced in high school at the hands, she says, of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
When asked, Twitter did not have anything to say about the decision to lock Woods' account.


POPPING THE QUESTION CAN BE A NERVE RACKING EXPERIENCE, BUT SYLVIE'S HERE TO HELP.
Did you know that the ring finger was chosen because it's the only finger with a direct vein to your heart? Your ring finger is your vena amoris, latin for the "vein of love." An engagement ring is the most important symbol of your love. It's the one thing you wear that's closest to your heart and reminds you of each other every day. Feeling the pressure yet? Don't worry. Our Sylvie Suitors have been through it all - the purchase, the proposal, even the wedding. We've got tips from the experts on everything from asking for her hand, finding the perfect ring, to determining your budget and planning an unforgettable proposal! Let us guide you on this journey, together.
We all know the cornerstone of a long and happy marriage is compatibility. A beautiful relationship is formed when two people meet and their personalities perfectly complement each other. Choosing your engagement ring is no different than choosing your partner. Each element of the ring - metal, cut, style and shape - must work in harmony to create something that compliments her unique style while perfectly summing up your love for her. We're here to help you find something better, together.
The finer details you need to know before making the purchase. Finding the perfect ring should take time, planning and research. We'll show you how to subtly investigate her jewelry preference and her ring size. Once the hard part's over we can guide you on choosing the best ring with countless articles, helpful hints, and above all, our trusty ring guide, to help you make the most educated decision when it comes to purchasing the ring.
Your diamond isn't the only thing lasts forever, so too will the proposal story she'll tell every time she shows off her Sylvie Collection engagement ring. Make sure her fairytale is memorable by preparing a proposal that will perfectly suit her style and bring her tears. Would she prefer something more traditional, such as a personal moment in a romantic, secluded spot? What about a flash dance proposal or big public display of affection? How do you know? We'll show just what clues to follow to make sure your engagement story is as enduring as your love itself.
Our Sylvie Suitors have been through it all - the purchase, the proposal, even the wedding. We took notes and created the perfect go to guide for everything from asking for her hand, finding the perfect ring, to determining your budget and planning an unforgettable proposal! Man to man, we've got your back.


These Star Wars Space Unisex Lounge Pants are awesome. They are covered in Han Solo's ship. They are perfect for just lounging around the house.
Wear these comfortable pants for sleep or lounging around and you will do so in style. It has two pockets and an elastic waistband with drawstring. Did I mention that it is covered in Millennium Falcons? You will be surrounded by an army of ships so you will feel like you can take on the Empire yourself.


text:
Eric William Beresford Woods (12 December 1892 – 12 August 1936) was an Australian rules footballer who played with University. Away from football he was a medical student, and after serving in World War I he returned to Australia and did not continue his VFL career.

Sources

Holmesby, Russell & Main, Jim (2007). The Encyclopedia of AFL Footballers. 7th ed. Melbourne: Bas Publishing.

1892 births
Australian rules footballers from Victoria (Australia)
University Football Club players
Australian military personnel of World War I
1936 deaths

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
/ Heavenly Star / Ch. 280.1
Heavenly Star
Ch. 280.1
Ch. 226Ch. 227Ch. 228Ch. 229Ch. 230Ch. 231Ch. 232Ch. 233Ch. 234Ch. 235Ch. 236Ch. 237Ch. 238Ch. 239Ch. 240Ch. 241Ch. 242Ch. 243Ch. 244Ch. 245Ch. 246Ch. 247Ch. 248Ch. 249Ch. 250Ch. 251Ch. 252Ch. 253Ch. 254Ch. 255Ch. 256Ch. 257Ch. 258Ch. 259Ch. 260Ch. 261.1Ch. 261.2Ch. 262Ch. 263Ch. 264.1Ch. 264.2Ch. 264.3Ch. 266Ch. 267Ch. 268Ch. 269Ch. 270Ch. 271Ch. 272.1Ch. 272.2Ch. 273.1Ch. 273.2Ch. 274.1Ch. 274.2Ch. 275Ch. 276.1Ch. 276.2Ch. 277.1Ch. 277.2Ch. 278Ch. 279Ch. 280.1Ch. 280.2Ch. 281Ch. 282Ch. 283Ch. 284.1Ch. 284.2Ch. 285Ch. 286Ch. 287Ch. 288Ch. 289.1Ch. 289.2Ch. 290Ch. 291.1Ch. 291.2Ch. 292Ch. 293.1Ch. 293.2Ch. 294.1Ch. 294.2Ch. 295Ch. 296.1Ch. 296.2Ch. 297.1Ch. 297.2Ch. 298.1Ch. 298.2Ch. 299.1Ch. 299.2Ch. 300.1Ch. 300.2Ch. 301.1Ch. 301.2Ch. 302Ch. 303Ch. 304.1Ch. 304.2Ch. 305.1Ch. 305.2Ch. 306.1Ch. 306.2Ch. 307.1Ch. 307.2Ch. 308.1Ch. 308.2Ch. 309
Heavenly Star – Chapter 280 – Interrogation
He suddenly looked at the prison guard who was pale, and asked, "when General Lin died, were you here?"
"Yes, I was." The prison guard replied slyly.
"What's going on?" Long Yin's gaze became furious. The "prison break" of Lin Zhan made him angry, but he'd never thought of killing him, and after Lin Xiao died, Lin Zhan followed. In this case, the Lin family would surely be alert; how would he commit such an unwise act?
His cold gaze became a warning sign for the prison guard, who trembled even more, "I…I am going to reply to the Emperor. At night…Master Lin was shouting endlessly that he felt sorry to the Emperor. Then, he started…drinking something, and I had no idea that was poison. Otherwise, I'd…I know that I'm useless. I deserve to die…" He knew that he wasn't making any sense, and his whole body was so weak that he almost fell to the ground.
"Well, since you've been careless enough to let him in prison. You do deserve to die, and you deserve to be cut open…someone come and kill him!"
The prison guard felt stiff all over his body, and his eyes widened. Although he had already anticipated that he'd be killed after being used, he had no idea that it would come so soon… Fortunately, it would be him only, and his family was left out.
"Emperor, wait…" Lin Kuang, who had been crying all the time, made a sound all of a sudden. He climbed out of the cell and said, "I request the Emperor to hand this person to me. I… I want to kill him myself."
Long Yin just wanted to speak, yet Black Bear interrupted, "the Emperor, since one has passed away after another in the Lin family, why don't we agree…" While he was saying, he wiped away the tears in his eyes.
Long Yin knew that Black Bear has always been filial, he looked at Lin Kuang who'd lost all his hope. After a long sigh and full of sorrow, he said, "although I was out of my mind yesterday, I'd never thought of making this heavy punishment. General Lin, why did you do this to yourself…Sigh, old General Lin, this is my fault. I am guilty, and I know what consequences this will cause to your family…"
"No, the Emperor, this is not your fault. It's the fault of Zhan'Er. I didn't expect him to feel so guilty, to the point that he ended his life. I am full of shame…and I want to bring the body of Zhan'Er back home."
"Everything will be done according to the wish of old General Lin." Long Yin said weakly. When he looked at the bottle of poison on the ground, he felt a bit suspicious. He didn't understand why Lin Zhan had to take this euthanasia with him before being placed in the dungeon. What alerted him more was that the death of Lin Zhan would certainly create resentment of Lin Kuang. No matter what reason that could be, this incident didn't make sense to Long Yin. And he wasn't ready for this scene either. He'd never doubted the loyalty of Lin Kuang, and there were only a few people whom he could trust. Also, Lin Kuang knew too many secrets of the Palace, and he might now do something against it, after the death of his son.
"I have sent people to inform the Lin family. Someone will come in a while, General Lin, for the incident of today, we will definitely give you an explanation. People can't resurrect; we still need your support. You must take care of yourself." Long Yin tried to comfort him.
"The old minister thanks the Emperor for your concern…rest assured, my Emperor, I still have many things to take care of, and I can't collapse now." Lin Kuang said expressionlessly.
Long Yin nodded, turned around and commanded, "you all may leave now. The Lin family will take care of the rest, and none of you should interfere."
The prison guards all retreated, leaving only the unfortunate prison guard who guarded Lin Zhan the night before. Before Black Bear left, he suddenly said to Lin Kuang humbly, "Old General Lin, although he made a mistake, I think he did not do it on purpose. Old General Lin, you will get rid of him alone, but there's no need to hurt his family." After he finished, he glanced at the prison guard with a gaze, and there was a flash of anger in his eyes, which was caught by Lin Kuang. Lin Kuang smiled bitterly, "the biggest misery in the world is an old man seeing his son pass away…if I put myself in his shoes, why would I cause any more sorrow to his family?"
Black Bear was satisfied with the answer, and he followed Long Yin To leave. After all, Long Yin believed that Black Bear had a kind heart, and he didn't pay too much attention to what he said to Lin Kuang. The past few days, it was not only exhausting to the Lin family, but for Long Yin also. Ye Wuchen's return and all the sudden changes were like a massive stab in his heart, and he couldn't get over it. His last hope was on the Southern Emperor, and that's why he'd been urging the marriage with Shui Mengchan. The Southern Emperor, Shui Yuntian once said, as long as they found Shui Mengchan, everything would be fine. And Long Yin hadn't seen a hint of Shui Yuntian these years.
The Lin family members soon came, when they saw Lin Zhan and Lin Kuang who looked empty, they all rushed forward and started crying. Then, Lin Kuang suddenly shouted, "shut up, all of you! Bring Lin Zhan home…and bring that person too!" He pointed to the prison guard. After struggling to get up, he swayed a few times then fainted. After his grandson and son died, it was impossible for him to withstand anything anymore.