The greed and covetousness of the political party machines will put all Europeans citizens at risk. The new political elites want to undermine the Community system of supranational democracy. By attempting a selfish power-grab, this narrow-minded minority of Europeans is threatening the European economy -- and much besides. More than ever, Europeans need a real Community approach to global problems.
One clear example is the financial crisis. This cannot be solved by a top-down approach, as it might in the nineteenth century. Hoping that massive infusions of money will wash out toxic assets from a corrupt system is futile when the system itself is morbidly unhealthy. Another case is the Energy/ Climate Change crisis. This too requires the full mobilization of all citizens. The science may be right and verified but human greed remains a factor than planning won't eradicate by fiat. No party political programme has resources, the independence or brain-power to solve the extreme complexity of these problems. Human ingenuity will selfishly unravel even a plan for planetary survival. Illegitimate party political control of European institutions is likely to make many matters worse with unforeseen consequences, corruption and low-level compromises. This approach is inadequate for the twenty-first century’s infinitely complex society.
Party political hierarchies encourage hasty, 'efficient' decisions, usually leading to unanticipated disasters. Only a Union based on an intense, open debate and the firm agreement at the levels of individuals, all associative organizations of civil society and national governments has any hope of dealing with such all-pervasive dangers. It needs to be based on fair, European rule of law. Europe's now dozing institutions need to wake up. be active and analytical, and assume their legal role in the original treaties.
The cracks in the replacement system, the top-down approach, are now under increasing strain. Their incapacities are becoming daily more apparent. The ever-more frequent European Council Summits with vaporous results are an obvious danger signal to the public. The leaders cannot solve the problems by international or even inter-governmental measures alone.
To solve European and global problems, Europe needs more democracy, not less. The disdain of the party machines and their ignorance of the original principles of Community democracy of the 1950 treaties will leave all 500 million Europeans in grave danger of economic and political subjugation. This is even more dangerous now in a globalized world with ruthless international entities eager to control from without or devour the Community from within.
The Founding Fathers designed European Communities in the 1950s to avoid wars among member states. www.schuman.info/ceca.htm But they also saw the grave danger that their economies could be taken over piecemeal by powerful foreign entities. In war they had seen the depths of raw, evil, human nature. www.schuman.info/Strasbourg549.htm For this they designed powerfully democratic institutions.
Self-assured politicians have over recent years selfishly tried to whittle away the independent pillars of dormant European democracy. They seem to think they are smarter than these great democrats who founded the most prosperous, peaceful Community and re-established vibrant democracies in all the founding Member States. Modern politicians seem to be little aware of the dangers the founding fathers faced and courageously tackled. These dangers included those identified as the root cause of two world wars.
The so-called reformers are ignorant of the European system, the Community. This Community is Plan Z, Europe’s last chance. It stands out like white against black to all the other national or European plans for peace over two thousand years. All the rest brought war and destruction.
How do I know the party machines are ignorant? Am I being too hard? Well I have never seen one ‘reformer’ politician properly explain what exactly is a supranational democracy. Who most recently told the public how the original Community is supposed to work? No wonder! Ministers are often quoted as saying they do not understand it. Which so-called reformer explained how their proposals will improve its dynamic structure by bringing more democracy to its five institutions? Has any politician of recent date initiated a system that makes war impossible elsewhere in the world?
Let's ask them an easier question. If they reluctantly concede the facts that the Schuman Plan brought Europe an extraordinary peace and prosperity, why haven't they described, scientifically and academically, how such a model works and could do the same throughout the world? Even the Commission does not explain how the system was originally designed to work. It would embarrass the present political Commissioners!
A further proof of this ignorance is the practical record. When it comes to the democratic ground rules in the European treaties, the very basis that they now want to change, they have shown no inclination or desire to respect them. Why? Because it will set them on a path for an ever-widening democracy, in Europe and at home!
We have seen in the previous Debates that (1) for more than fifty years governments have been refusing fair elections under the single statute specified in the treaties; (2) these unfair election results distort power structures; (3) the proposed Lisbon Treaty would legitimize an irreversible power-grab by party machines of the Commission; (4) the proposed treaty worsens these distortions and encourages corruption by ruling party machines because NO CORRUPT Commission President will EVER be sacked by the Parliament; (5) a morally fused Commission and Parliament will encourage corruption, try to marginalize legitimate opposition, while encouraging extreme groups with monetary hand-outs.
This was de Gaulle’s system: ignore the European Parliament, subsidize important voting groups in France with European taxpayers’ money to encourage uncritical compliance. It ended in the riots and revolution of 1968. Germany was forced to pay as his price for political rehabilitation. Supported by corrupt Italian and other governments for decades, the agricultural budget with its massive subsidies to voters remained as secret as the nuclear programme. Why? Because the CAP and much of the money flowing ceaselessly to Italy’s south for ‘structural reform’ was corrupt. When these people ‘chloroformed’ the institutions in the 1960s and 70s, the Mafia got fat. The poor stayed poor.
One would have hoped the public had learned a lesson: 'Chloroform' the European Community democratic institutions at your peril. You will end up breeding secret committees, secret money networks, and a level of political corruption that is still with us today.
In their wisdom and understanding of human nature, the Founding Fathers of the European Communities created five independent institutions that would assure, justice and democracy in Europe. www.schuman.info/supra5.htm It would make war impossible. They succeeded in spite of the corrupt politicians. In their system all States were equal and none was able to use power politics of the strong to dominate the weak.
Politicians who replaced the Statesmen over the last half-century have endlessly tried to subvert those institutions for their own selfish purposes. The present threat is the attack on the independence of the European Commission, the central institution of the supranational Community system. De Gaulle failed to put the Commission under French national control as a secretariat. The other States had a few statesmen with the sense to insist that the Commission must remain independent. France had its European resistance figures against a return to power politics too.
The present threat comes from a more diverse source, party political machines. They want the Commission as a secretariat in their own sullied hands. They learned the lesson from De Gaulle who had only the powers of one centralized Gaullist State. He could not succeed against the solidarity of the other smaller democratic States. Perhaps, say the party bureaucrats, a multi-pronged attack by all political parties together will succeed, where he failed.
By one perspective they are smaller than the Grand Charles and the French Fifth Republic — they represent only two percent of the population who have party cards. But on the other that two percent includes party members who control the government machines and have enormous influence in society. They promise a plethora of new jobs for the party boys and girls, career prospects, to water the appetite of the more flexible and less-than-scrupulous party followers.
The crux of their proposal is that the European Commission should give up its last pretence of independence. It should be fused to party machines. For what purpose? The ‘reform’ will remove any restraint on budget control.
Who designed this open invitation to corruption? The political drafters of the proposed Constitutional Treaty and Lisbon Treaty foolishly wanted to stitch in the yah-boo, confrontational politics like they have in the trough at home. That's a 17th Century distortion of democracy. The Community system is a 21st Century super democracy. For Europe it would be like trying to stitch a pig's head on a human body. Such ideological shouting matches were NOT part of the revolutionary Community system. Instead the original concept requires that the Commission should be an honest broker. The Community works on the basis of pragmatism, tried and tested steps to acquiring wisdom.
But the politicians had invented a clever ruse so beneficial to themselves that even when the Constitutional Treaty was roundly defeated in referendums, they insisted on the same thing in the Reform/Lisbon Treaty. This time they said: No referendums, wherever party machines can stop them. Only one court said NO.
How did the parties explain this power-grab to the public? They said that they wanted the EP elections to attract more public attention. Party politics would make the issues more controversial, they said. They wanted to reverse their decline with public trust. Fewer and fewer Europeans wanted to vote.
So much for high principles! But why don’t people vote? They are disillusioned by tales that politicians are corrupt. One recent scandal alleges a score of multinationals ran an expenses-paid ‘lobby office’ inside the European Parliament. Another, about MEPs’ assistants, involves millions of Euros. MEPs are refusing to publish other, apparently more explosive, auditors’ reports. If the Parliament won’t come clean on rumours involving millions, why should voters trust the ‘usual suspects’ to elect a political pal as Commission President dealing with billions? Their pal would be in cahoots with the political machines. Impartiality and budget control would go out the window.
These billions are taxpayers’ money that will be lavished at home and abroad to fulfill the myopic, ideological goals of a party machine that has taken power in parliament and has thus gained and even more valuable prize — the Commission.
Why do I call the politicians myopic? Firstly the potential instruments of democratic solidarity to solve such problems lie in the letter and spirit of the original treaties. The political class has not only ignored and bad-mouthed these principles.They offered no viable alternatives. They want the alternating competition of the trough.This is barren, even destructive. It is Plan A. There is little chance of having a lasting, honest solution either to the financial crisis or the coming environmental catastrophes by means of the Constitutional Treaty or the Lisbon Treaty.
The instruments in these treaty 'reforms', the product of best brains of party machines, are totally inadequate for the gravity of today's problems! Governments have already returned to secret talks behind the walls of the Council building in the vain hope that inter-governmental agreement will be forged with the democratic control shut out. Vain hope! Our disaster!
The public is being taken for a ride, like an emergency patient being taken to hospital. You are diagnosed with serious brain and heart damage (Commission) and renal failure (Parliament). Arms and legs are broken (organs of Civil Society). What's more you are blind and need a delicate eye operation (the secretive Council meeting behind closed doors). Arriving at the operation room, you are told that the surgeon is to be ... your family butcher. He knows all about body parts, at least in a dead pig. He also knows how to make a soup of the meat (fusing legally independent organs together). But does he know how a human body works and what is needed when it is seriously sick?
Unless the politicians can provide a proper diagnosis and show adequate training, the warning is to keep far away. You are better off without the butcher, unless you want to be part of someone else's soup!
The next debate will deal more about specific acute global problems that would follow from the party political power-grab of Europe’s democratic institutions.
23 October, 2009
14 October, 2009
When is the Commission going to tell the TRUTH about Europe?
For the last several decades the European Commission has been telling whoppers, fibs and lies. At the time of writing, it is still doing so. A disinformation campaign has cost Europeans millions of euros. In total the losses to the European economy must amount to billions, possibly trillions. They began in the Gaullist period. They distorted competition and robbed consumers not only of money but political powers for a fairer Europe.
The lie is equivalent to telling a child that he is a poor orphan. In reality he is the son of a rich, benevolent family. The untruth that the Commission and many of the institutions are perpetuating is about the origin of the Community. It is about the real meaning and description of European democracy. They want to tell a lie about when, where and how the European Union came from. Believe it or not!
If you don't believe it, check the facts! Go to Commission publications and the site www.europa.eu the website of the European institutions. Under history, you will find what is supposed to be the FULL text of the Schuman Declaration. It is no such thing!
If the Commission started publishing the FULL text it would expose the falsity of the whole so-called debate on democracy in Europe. It would expose the Orwellian efforts that spent million of taxpayers' money trying to convince Europeans that 1957 was the Birthday of Europe and that citizens had been "Together since 1957" ! That untruth was simply a campaign to impose a Constitutional/ Reform Treaty that had already been rejected. Behind this disinformation is the sordid attempt by economic/ political forces to impose a new system that undermines the European supranational democracy. It broke up cartels that robbed citizens and incited conflict and wars. Schuman announced this new supranational democracy in multiple public speeches in the period 1948 onwards. He did this at the United Nations in 1948 and 1949. He spoke about building a supranational democracy in Europe in May 1949 ONE YEAR before the the Declaration of 1950.
In other words the European Commission -- led by the Council of Ministers who find it even more embarrassing -- have chopped out, deleted and censored a decade from Europe's history of democracy. They imposed a blackout on the first decade since the war as if a Common Market arose by magic and saved everyone's bacon. Coincidently this date 1957/8 coincides with the seizure of power by anti-communautaire Mr Charles de Gaulle, now draped in the European flag rather than the tricoleur!
A real democracy would impose citizens' control on the Community budget. I have never seen or heard any Commissioner discuss these matters. Yet it is the fundamental duty of all Commissioners to discuss and support European democracy. The Commission is supposed to be Guardian of the Treaties! How on earth can you get public support for a new and highly improved form of democracy if you seal your lips with sticking plaster on what it is all about? Are Commissioners sworn to silence, ignorant or in a plot against the public? What qualified them to be Commissioners if they do not know the history of the Institution?
Here's what the European Commission does not want the public to know. This is the full translation of the introduction of Robert Schuman's Declaration that was made nearly SIXTY years ago. And before we begin, What preparations are the Community institutions preparing to celebrate this 60th Anniversary, the longest period of peace in Western Europe's bloody history? Or is it all too politically embarrassing, so soon after the fiftieth???!!!
"It is no longer a question of vain words but of a bold act, a constructive act. France has acted and the consequences of its action can be immense. We hope they will be. France has acted primarily for peace and to give peace a real chance.
For this it is necessary that Europe should exist. Five years, almost to the day, after the unconditional surrender of Germany, France is accomplishing the first decisive act for European construction and is associating Germany with this. Conditions in Europe are going to be entirely changed because of it. This transformation will facilitate other action which has been impossible until this day.
Europe will be born from this, a Europe which is solidly united and constructed around a strong framework. It will be a Europe where the standard of living will rise by grouping together production and expanding markets, thus encouraging the lowering of prices.
In this Europe, the Ruhr, the Saar and the French industrial basins will work together for common goals and their progress will be followed by observers from the United Nations. All Europeans without distinction, whether from east or west, and all the overseas territories, especially Africa, which awaits development and prosperity from this old continent, will gain benefits from their labour of peace."
Note what the public has not been told:
1. Schuman makes clear that this proposal is the REAL start of major changes in Europe and consequently all the world.
2 This initiative will have IMMENSE consequences.
3. It will provide the ONLY real solution so far proposed for world peace.
4. An entity called EUROPE must exist for this world plan to succeed.
5. Five years previously Europe lay in blood, ruins and scattered with dead and dying. In only five years, Schuman and the French government were making the FIRST DECISIVE ACT in constructing Europe.
6. The European Community will transform the entirety of world politics. It will 'facilitate other action which has been impossible until this day.'
7. The first Community marks the BIRTHDAY of Europe. This is exactly what the Six leaders who signed the founding treaty on 18 April 1951 declared in the Europe Declaration. As far as I know this has never been published on the Commission's website. This makes complete nonsense of the attempt by unscrupulous politicians to try to make the signing of the Common Market treaty the birth of Europe. Absolute irresponsibility worthy of the propaganda systems of Joe Stalin and Herr Hitler! They rewrote history and changed facts to support their totalitarian regimes. They repeated lies until they made it difficult or dangerous for any citizen to resist and oppose them with truth.
8. The European Community will have a solid foundation. In terms of personnel it is small. In terms of budget (even with the inflated, political operations) it uses only one per cent of the GDP of 27 Community Member States. The USA's federal budget uses multiple times that amount. The Community has had the strength and flexibility to withstand attack, opposition and abuse of selfish, nationalistic leaders and self-serving politicians. It provides a model for many other aspiring Communities of States in the world that are empty shadows in comparison. Nowadays they mistakenly think that something like the European Union is the solution (without a Community legal and democratic system)!
9. Schuman's forecast that Europe would both be prosperous and would also see falling prices for goods is remarkable. Economically these two matters rarely coincide. His declaration contrasts starkly with contemporary prognosticators who in 1950 saw Europe as a continuing zone of war, poverty and and more conflict.
10. Europeans behind the Iron Curtain would not only benefit from the European Community but they had a right and an open invitation to join it. Schuman made this clear at the press conference. It was, he said, open to Russia. Membership would have totally turned the communist system upside down because it imposed gradual democratic change. (The Soviets immediately attacked the Community as a Cartel. That was pretty stupid. The European Community was the world's first international anti-cartel agency.) The Community was a beacon of light to all the countries of central and eastern Europe and wore away the Iron Curtain itself. Schuman predicted this would happen.
11. The Community system -- if properly understood -- would bring peace and prosperity to Africa and other continents where European powers once had colonies.
12. The mission statement of the European Community -- is to make peace at home and to create the labour of peace abroad, based on the realistic and true principles of the type of democracy that Schuman announced. This is far from how democracy is presented by politicians -- who all too often favour a system that benefits political parties and not the people.
The full text can be found on www.schuman.info where it has been published for the last decade. There you will also find an analysis and a quiz on the full text.
The lie is equivalent to telling a child that he is a poor orphan. In reality he is the son of a rich, benevolent family. The untruth that the Commission and many of the institutions are perpetuating is about the origin of the Community. It is about the real meaning and description of European democracy. They want to tell a lie about when, where and how the European Union came from. Believe it or not!
If you don't believe it, check the facts! Go to Commission publications and the site www.europa.eu the website of the European institutions. Under history, you will find what is supposed to be the FULL text of the Schuman Declaration. It is no such thing!
If the Commission started publishing the FULL text it would expose the falsity of the whole so-called debate on democracy in Europe. It would expose the Orwellian efforts that spent million of taxpayers' money trying to convince Europeans that 1957 was the Birthday of Europe and that citizens had been "Together since 1957" ! That untruth was simply a campaign to impose a Constitutional/ Reform Treaty that had already been rejected. Behind this disinformation is the sordid attempt by economic/ political forces to impose a new system that undermines the European supranational democracy. It broke up cartels that robbed citizens and incited conflict and wars. Schuman announced this new supranational democracy in multiple public speeches in the period 1948 onwards. He did this at the United Nations in 1948 and 1949. He spoke about building a supranational democracy in Europe in May 1949 ONE YEAR before the the Declaration of 1950.
In other words the European Commission -- led by the Council of Ministers who find it even more embarrassing -- have chopped out, deleted and censored a decade from Europe's history of democracy. They imposed a blackout on the first decade since the war as if a Common Market arose by magic and saved everyone's bacon. Coincidently this date 1957/8 coincides with the seizure of power by anti-communautaire Mr Charles de Gaulle, now draped in the European flag rather than the tricoleur!
A real democracy would impose citizens' control on the Community budget. I have never seen or heard any Commissioner discuss these matters. Yet it is the fundamental duty of all Commissioners to discuss and support European democracy. The Commission is supposed to be Guardian of the Treaties! How on earth can you get public support for a new and highly improved form of democracy if you seal your lips with sticking plaster on what it is all about? Are Commissioners sworn to silence, ignorant or in a plot against the public? What qualified them to be Commissioners if they do not know the history of the Institution?
Here's what the European Commission does not want the public to know. This is the full translation of the introduction of Robert Schuman's Declaration that was made nearly SIXTY years ago. And before we begin, What preparations are the Community institutions preparing to celebrate this 60th Anniversary, the longest period of peace in Western Europe's bloody history? Or is it all too politically embarrassing, so soon after the fiftieth???!!!
"It is no longer a question of vain words but of a bold act, a constructive act. France has acted and the consequences of its action can be immense. We hope they will be. France has acted primarily for peace and to give peace a real chance.
For this it is necessary that Europe should exist. Five years, almost to the day, after the unconditional surrender of Germany, France is accomplishing the first decisive act for European construction and is associating Germany with this. Conditions in Europe are going to be entirely changed because of it. This transformation will facilitate other action which has been impossible until this day.
Europe will be born from this, a Europe which is solidly united and constructed around a strong framework. It will be a Europe where the standard of living will rise by grouping together production and expanding markets, thus encouraging the lowering of prices.
In this Europe, the Ruhr, the Saar and the French industrial basins will work together for common goals and their progress will be followed by observers from the United Nations. All Europeans without distinction, whether from east or west, and all the overseas territories, especially Africa, which awaits development and prosperity from this old continent, will gain benefits from their labour of peace."
Note what the public has not been told:
1. Schuman makes clear that this proposal is the REAL start of major changes in Europe and consequently all the world.
2 This initiative will have IMMENSE consequences.
3. It will provide the ONLY real solution so far proposed for world peace.
4. An entity called EUROPE must exist for this world plan to succeed.
5. Five years previously Europe lay in blood, ruins and scattered with dead and dying. In only five years, Schuman and the French government were making the FIRST DECISIVE ACT in constructing Europe.
6. The European Community will transform the entirety of world politics. It will 'facilitate other action which has been impossible until this day.'
7. The first Community marks the BIRTHDAY of Europe. This is exactly what the Six leaders who signed the founding treaty on 18 April 1951 declared in the Europe Declaration. As far as I know this has never been published on the Commission's website. This makes complete nonsense of the attempt by unscrupulous politicians to try to make the signing of the Common Market treaty the birth of Europe. Absolute irresponsibility worthy of the propaganda systems of Joe Stalin and Herr Hitler! They rewrote history and changed facts to support their totalitarian regimes. They repeated lies until they made it difficult or dangerous for any citizen to resist and oppose them with truth.
8. The European Community will have a solid foundation. In terms of personnel it is small. In terms of budget (even with the inflated, political operations) it uses only one per cent of the GDP of 27 Community Member States. The USA's federal budget uses multiple times that amount. The Community has had the strength and flexibility to withstand attack, opposition and abuse of selfish, nationalistic leaders and self-serving politicians. It provides a model for many other aspiring Communities of States in the world that are empty shadows in comparison. Nowadays they mistakenly think that something like the European Union is the solution (without a Community legal and democratic system)!
9. Schuman's forecast that Europe would both be prosperous and would also see falling prices for goods is remarkable. Economically these two matters rarely coincide. His declaration contrasts starkly with contemporary prognosticators who in 1950 saw Europe as a continuing zone of war, poverty and and more conflict.
10. Europeans behind the Iron Curtain would not only benefit from the European Community but they had a right and an open invitation to join it. Schuman made this clear at the press conference. It was, he said, open to Russia. Membership would have totally turned the communist system upside down because it imposed gradual democratic change. (The Soviets immediately attacked the Community as a Cartel. That was pretty stupid. The European Community was the world's first international anti-cartel agency.) The Community was a beacon of light to all the countries of central and eastern Europe and wore away the Iron Curtain itself. Schuman predicted this would happen.
11. The Community system -- if properly understood -- would bring peace and prosperity to Africa and other continents where European powers once had colonies.
12. The mission statement of the European Community -- is to make peace at home and to create the labour of peace abroad, based on the realistic and true principles of the type of democracy that Schuman announced. This is far from how democracy is presented by politicians -- who all too often favour a system that benefits political parties and not the people.
The full text can be found on www.schuman.info where it has been published for the last decade. There you will also find an analysis and a quiz on the full text.
04 October, 2009
2. Why the Lisbon Treaty is an open invitation to corruption
The proposed treaty will make it impossible for Parliament to sack the Commission for overt corruption, even of the type that stinks in the public's noses. Here's how the degradation of Europe's democracy was instigated. Either by malice, lust for power or ignorance, political party machines are trying to block or subvert the checks and balances initiated by the founding fathers like Robert Schuman.
Over the last two centuries the European States were faced with major problems. Not only war - that was the common virus of the Continent. A violent outbreak of war was expected at regular intervals. The main problem was the ever-increasing deaths in these endemic wars. Increased wartime mortality, caused by the industrialization of war, took on aspects of a generalized European suicide, said Schuman. In reality there are just two ways to deal with Europe. Let us call them Plan ‘A’ and Plan ‘Z’.
Plan A was seen as the usual solution to a war. Actually Plan A caused war as much as it solved it. One country conquered another to seize property or booty, or put an end to oppression. But then with time the second country rose up and freed themselves and conquered the first. In fact all the plans from A to Y caused war. They were really only variations of Plan A. Solutions A to Y all involved one nation, or one industrialized group, or one cartel, one political, military, economic, philosophical, religious or racial ideology, dominating all the other groups of Europe. Historians say that for Europeans war was business as usual for two thousand years. Within Western Europe every generation was either recovering from war, preparing war or actually conducting war. see www.schuman.info/jubilee.htm
After World War 2, nations were still faced with the same choice, (when X= atheistic Marxism and Y= racist and neo-pagan Nazism plus the persistent W= lucrelatrous Cartels).
In 1950, the European Community’s founding fathers created an entirely new idea, called Plan Z. This was the final solution. Not for death but for living together in peace. It is also called a supranational democracy. By banning domination by a clique, it encourages prosperity while eliminating the seemingly inevitable descent into war every generation. Europeans chose LIFE. They chose peace.
Supranational democracy made war materially impossible. It made war unthinkable. There have been NO wars in Western Europe inside the Community in more than sixty years. No other period in all European history has had such a long peace.
At the turn of this new century, along comes another generation of politicians. They are a privileged third generation. The only third generation of Europeans who have not known a European war inside the borders of what was the original Community. They chose to reform the founding treaties. Fine. But how do they choose to reform it? Cocooned by peace and prosperity, they said that Plan Z is outdated. Forgetful of who caused the damage to the Community idea and why, or just willfully ignorant of the original concept of democracy, they say their idea of a political oligarchy is more efficient and more modern. It would certainly benefit them. They ignore the people who warn: ‘This continuing loss our rights and our freedom of expression will end in our subjugation and then disaster for you. You politicians do not respect our rights in the treaties. This proposal for treaty 'reform' is really Plan A, writ large. This time it inserts a pernicious political clique inside plan Z. Your plan A introduces the same poisonous virus, asserting control by one powerful group over the weak and apparently powerless. That virus is written in deep letters in the heart of the proposed Constitutional Treaty and the ‘Reform Treaty’ now called the Lisbon Treaty.’ In short, they say, the poisonous virus enters the Community system lethally by making the European Commission a party-political oligarchy. The other institutions of civil society are chloroformed.
This menace has been growing in the years since the departure of the founding fathers. De Gaulle attempted a nationalistic fight-back 'to suffocate and chloroform' the institutions. He wished to be in control of Europe with the Commission as his secretariat. He therefore subverted the Community system for his own egotistical and nationalistic purposes. Other politicians followed suit by playing nationalistic cards. They did not succeed. Whether democrats or not however, they did not stop filling the Commission vacancies illegitimately with national politicians only.
Arrogant politicians are cuckoos who have lulled the public to sleep. They coo: 'The virus is harmless. Why not make the Commission political? Why should it be independent? All European governments have political parties, don’t they? All Commission members must be national representatives, and of course politicians'.
Democrats, WAKE UP! The politicians are attacking every autonomous aspect of the Community system with its five independent institutions for all Civil Society; www.schuman.info/supra5.htm They are turning Europe into a rubber stamp without checks or balances. The ‘reform’ fuses the competence of two independent bodies, the Commission and Parliament. It puts both under party control. It makes the secretive Council of Ministers complicit in this underhand political nepotism. The treaties say the Council should have a higher, nobler responsibility for States, not parties.
A democratic system must protect the rights of the individual against the abuse of governments. What does the ‘reforming’ treaty do? It puts the foxes (the politicians) in charge of the chicken coop and right inside the coop too! They want the key to lock anyone out who would stop this oligarchy! That means ALL non-political people and associations. Referendum results are ignored or banned wherever possible.
The foxes want to exclude the public from becoming candidates for the President of the Commission. Unlike the USA, children will be told they should not consider becoming President if they wish to remain honest, impartial and non-ideological. Only a person selected and supported by political parties will legally be allowed, the foxes declare arrogantly. Now and for ever more. Naturally, this person must also support them, the political foxes. Only two or three people have any chance of becoming the new Commission President, one each selected exclusively by the big party machines. Who makes the final selection? The Council of Ministers, themselves all party politicians. The European Parliament run by the main parties must then confirm this person by electing the Council's choice by a majority vote. What a stitch-up!
Each party has already gone to the polls supporting 'their' political candidate for Commission President. Each party has also denounced the other parties’ candidates as incompetent. The Council designates who has won this hypocritical media theatre of vitriol and infantile name-calling. He or she will be the one who has gained the most votes in the parliamentary election. This person is then nominated for an entirely different institution, the Commission. The previous treaties say exactly the opposite: the Commission should be independent of ALL interest groups, including and we might say especially, the political parties.
The electoral result will also not be fair. As we have seen in the first Commission Debate, the election results are willfully distorted by national governments. They refuse a single electoral law specified in the treaties.
To succeed in being elected in Parliament, the would-be Commission president must flatter the majority MEPs, his pals, and their ideology. Thus, each new Commission presidency will boast and vaunt distinct political biases and a preferred ideology. An ideology is, for any who need reminding, a sophisticated mixture of truth, error and ignorance.
Why do politicians want to change the extraordinarily successful supranational model of democracy, by creating an undemocratic oligarchy and destroying the Community's balanced, if chloroformed, democratic framework? They figure that a treaty written by politicians brings a sort of legitimacy if passed by the politicians’ parliaments in all States. That will trump referendums and popular disapproval. With ratification they will say they have the law on their side for a potential power and money grab, unprecedented in Community history.
The Commission has powers to redistribute the budget. In a fully functioning European Community an independent Parliament and the other independent bodies like the Consultative Committees must control the budget. The latter institutions, that the treaties say represent organized Civil Society, are already chloroformed. Members, now mostly politicians not NGOs, are hand picked to keep quiet. And in this politicians’ ‘reform’ the Parliament is no longer a controller but becomes an accomplice. Corruption? No problem! The Commission has Parliament in its pocket. The MEPs will also expect something for their open pockets and purses!
The second danger relates to turning over the reins of power to vote-gathering machines. Under the ‘reform’ system, parliamentary elections would try to vacuum up every vote, including the most extremist ones. Once a Commission is politicized, it would try to seduce the voters of either one section of the population or the other, searching for the marginal voters to make up a majority of MEPs. For example, some parties would naturally turn left to labour, others to capitalists, others to the middle ground. But that is not all. Some covertly turn to cartelists, financiers or a religion such as atheism, secularism or fanaticism, those who threaten violence. With the smell of corrupt money in the air, Europe will suffer the worst excesses of right-wing or left-wing politics, and covert politics, while trying to seduce with money the fanaticism of extreme, and sometimes highly dangerous, groupings. In our society, all should have a voice, but none should threaten violence.
If voter-gathering machines make the theatre by fair means or foul to elect MEPs for a majority, the real object is to capture the Commission Presidency. Only one person can occupy this chair. For democracy, the most important question relates to the earliest stage of candidate selection. The ‘reform’ is silent on this, of course. Who selects the candidates for Commission President from the millions of potential candidates among the public? The main political parties! Who will they chose? One of their own. That is one of the 2 per cent of Europeans who carry their party membership card. Some 98 per cent of citizens will be eliminated.
Don’t hope if you buy a card, you will have a chance to become President! The party secretariats will help chose the preferred candidate amongst a small clique of ‘suitable’ names. A bare handful of people are the real candidates. The ‘Reformers' want to limit European free choice for democracy - of half a billion citizens - to the smallest possible number, those of the party chiefs. The people’s democratic duty will be reduced to voting Yes to one of two or three faces.
This represents the most blatant discrimination ever attempted in any democratic state. And with powerful political incentives. Top political oligarchs in a political cartel can choose their Joe President to influence the entire European economy and proposals for European funding for their own cause.
What a prize! Parliament will NEVER sack the President, even for gross corruption, www.schuman.info/LTEP.htm . The treaties give Parliament the job of dismissing the Commission for misconduct. The Commission President’s political pals, the foxes, are the only ones who could sack him. Dismissal requires an open vote with two-thirds majority! No chance of that! The majority are his most stalwart supporters. Any brave soul who broke ranks would be roundly abused for disloyalty. The Commission’s built-in parliamentary majority and the party machine would pressurize the honest MEPs who contemplated becoming turncoats! In the elections, the majority of MEPs and their party allies have chosen, nurtured and influenced the corrupt President in all his policies! The party secretariat picked him. They all not only committed their vote to him but also got the Europeans to vote to create the Parliament's majority that put this political fox in office. This is Europe's best person, they said, to be the referee and arbiter of European politics.
Thus the proposed Lisbon Treaty fails in the essential task of any true democracy: the ability to throw the rascals out! A politicized Commission President will be absolutely free to fund party political foundations and activities from taxpayers' money. No questions asked. Money calms other critics. And extra funding for the main parties will eliminate any difficult grouping (especially those for the poor and oppressed) that opposes them.
This invitation to corruption is not just a local matter affecting only Europe’s half billion people. The dangers of this fatally flawed ‘reform’ are of worldwide importance as we will discuss in the next debate.
Over the last two centuries the European States were faced with major problems. Not only war - that was the common virus of the Continent. A violent outbreak of war was expected at regular intervals. The main problem was the ever-increasing deaths in these endemic wars. Increased wartime mortality, caused by the industrialization of war, took on aspects of a generalized European suicide, said Schuman. In reality there are just two ways to deal with Europe. Let us call them Plan ‘A’ and Plan ‘Z’.
Plan A was seen as the usual solution to a war. Actually Plan A caused war as much as it solved it. One country conquered another to seize property or booty, or put an end to oppression. But then with time the second country rose up and freed themselves and conquered the first. In fact all the plans from A to Y caused war. They were really only variations of Plan A. Solutions A to Y all involved one nation, or one industrialized group, or one cartel, one political, military, economic, philosophical, religious or racial ideology, dominating all the other groups of Europe. Historians say that for Europeans war was business as usual for two thousand years. Within Western Europe every generation was either recovering from war, preparing war or actually conducting war. see www.schuman.info/jubilee.htm
After World War 2, nations were still faced with the same choice, (when X= atheistic Marxism and Y= racist and neo-pagan Nazism plus the persistent W= lucrelatrous Cartels).
In 1950, the European Community’s founding fathers created an entirely new idea, called Plan Z. This was the final solution. Not for death but for living together in peace. It is also called a supranational democracy. By banning domination by a clique, it encourages prosperity while eliminating the seemingly inevitable descent into war every generation. Europeans chose LIFE. They chose peace.
Supranational democracy made war materially impossible. It made war unthinkable. There have been NO wars in Western Europe inside the Community in more than sixty years. No other period in all European history has had such a long peace.
At the turn of this new century, along comes another generation of politicians. They are a privileged third generation. The only third generation of Europeans who have not known a European war inside the borders of what was the original Community. They chose to reform the founding treaties. Fine. But how do they choose to reform it? Cocooned by peace and prosperity, they said that Plan Z is outdated. Forgetful of who caused the damage to the Community idea and why, or just willfully ignorant of the original concept of democracy, they say their idea of a political oligarchy is more efficient and more modern. It would certainly benefit them. They ignore the people who warn: ‘This continuing loss our rights and our freedom of expression will end in our subjugation and then disaster for you. You politicians do not respect our rights in the treaties. This proposal for treaty 'reform' is really Plan A, writ large. This time it inserts a pernicious political clique inside plan Z. Your plan A introduces the same poisonous virus, asserting control by one powerful group over the weak and apparently powerless. That virus is written in deep letters in the heart of the proposed Constitutional Treaty and the ‘Reform Treaty’ now called the Lisbon Treaty.’ In short, they say, the poisonous virus enters the Community system lethally by making the European Commission a party-political oligarchy. The other institutions of civil society are chloroformed.
This menace has been growing in the years since the departure of the founding fathers. De Gaulle attempted a nationalistic fight-back 'to suffocate and chloroform' the institutions. He wished to be in control of Europe with the Commission as his secretariat. He therefore subverted the Community system for his own egotistical and nationalistic purposes. Other politicians followed suit by playing nationalistic cards. They did not succeed. Whether democrats or not however, they did not stop filling the Commission vacancies illegitimately with national politicians only.
Arrogant politicians are cuckoos who have lulled the public to sleep. They coo: 'The virus is harmless. Why not make the Commission political? Why should it be independent? All European governments have political parties, don’t they? All Commission members must be national representatives, and of course politicians'.
Democrats, WAKE UP! The politicians are attacking every autonomous aspect of the Community system with its five independent institutions for all Civil Society; www.schuman.info/supra5.htm They are turning Europe into a rubber stamp without checks or balances. The ‘reform’ fuses the competence of two independent bodies, the Commission and Parliament. It puts both under party control. It makes the secretive Council of Ministers complicit in this underhand political nepotism. The treaties say the Council should have a higher, nobler responsibility for States, not parties.
A democratic system must protect the rights of the individual against the abuse of governments. What does the ‘reforming’ treaty do? It puts the foxes (the politicians) in charge of the chicken coop and right inside the coop too! They want the key to lock anyone out who would stop this oligarchy! That means ALL non-political people and associations. Referendum results are ignored or banned wherever possible.
The foxes want to exclude the public from becoming candidates for the President of the Commission. Unlike the USA, children will be told they should not consider becoming President if they wish to remain honest, impartial and non-ideological. Only a person selected and supported by political parties will legally be allowed, the foxes declare arrogantly. Now and for ever more. Naturally, this person must also support them, the political foxes. Only two or three people have any chance of becoming the new Commission President, one each selected exclusively by the big party machines. Who makes the final selection? The Council of Ministers, themselves all party politicians. The European Parliament run by the main parties must then confirm this person by electing the Council's choice by a majority vote. What a stitch-up!
Each party has already gone to the polls supporting 'their' political candidate for Commission President. Each party has also denounced the other parties’ candidates as incompetent. The Council designates who has won this hypocritical media theatre of vitriol and infantile name-calling. He or she will be the one who has gained the most votes in the parliamentary election. This person is then nominated for an entirely different institution, the Commission. The previous treaties say exactly the opposite: the Commission should be independent of ALL interest groups, including and we might say especially, the political parties.
The electoral result will also not be fair. As we have seen in the first Commission Debate, the election results are willfully distorted by national governments. They refuse a single electoral law specified in the treaties.
To succeed in being elected in Parliament, the would-be Commission president must flatter the majority MEPs, his pals, and their ideology. Thus, each new Commission presidency will boast and vaunt distinct political biases and a preferred ideology. An ideology is, for any who need reminding, a sophisticated mixture of truth, error and ignorance.
Why do politicians want to change the extraordinarily successful supranational model of democracy, by creating an undemocratic oligarchy and destroying the Community's balanced, if chloroformed, democratic framework? They figure that a treaty written by politicians brings a sort of legitimacy if passed by the politicians’ parliaments in all States. That will trump referendums and popular disapproval. With ratification they will say they have the law on their side for a potential power and money grab, unprecedented in Community history.
The Commission has powers to redistribute the budget. In a fully functioning European Community an independent Parliament and the other independent bodies like the Consultative Committees must control the budget. The latter institutions, that the treaties say represent organized Civil Society, are already chloroformed. Members, now mostly politicians not NGOs, are hand picked to keep quiet. And in this politicians’ ‘reform’ the Parliament is no longer a controller but becomes an accomplice. Corruption? No problem! The Commission has Parliament in its pocket. The MEPs will also expect something for their open pockets and purses!
The second danger relates to turning over the reins of power to vote-gathering machines. Under the ‘reform’ system, parliamentary elections would try to vacuum up every vote, including the most extremist ones. Once a Commission is politicized, it would try to seduce the voters of either one section of the population or the other, searching for the marginal voters to make up a majority of MEPs. For example, some parties would naturally turn left to labour, others to capitalists, others to the middle ground. But that is not all. Some covertly turn to cartelists, financiers or a religion such as atheism, secularism or fanaticism, those who threaten violence. With the smell of corrupt money in the air, Europe will suffer the worst excesses of right-wing or left-wing politics, and covert politics, while trying to seduce with money the fanaticism of extreme, and sometimes highly dangerous, groupings. In our society, all should have a voice, but none should threaten violence.
If voter-gathering machines make the theatre by fair means or foul to elect MEPs for a majority, the real object is to capture the Commission Presidency. Only one person can occupy this chair. For democracy, the most important question relates to the earliest stage of candidate selection. The ‘reform’ is silent on this, of course. Who selects the candidates for Commission President from the millions of potential candidates among the public? The main political parties! Who will they chose? One of their own. That is one of the 2 per cent of Europeans who carry their party membership card. Some 98 per cent of citizens will be eliminated.
Don’t hope if you buy a card, you will have a chance to become President! The party secretariats will help chose the preferred candidate amongst a small clique of ‘suitable’ names. A bare handful of people are the real candidates. The ‘Reformers' want to limit European free choice for democracy - of half a billion citizens - to the smallest possible number, those of the party chiefs. The people’s democratic duty will be reduced to voting Yes to one of two or three faces.
This represents the most blatant discrimination ever attempted in any democratic state. And with powerful political incentives. Top political oligarchs in a political cartel can choose their Joe President to influence the entire European economy and proposals for European funding for their own cause.
What a prize! Parliament will NEVER sack the President, even for gross corruption, www.schuman.info/LTEP.htm . The treaties give Parliament the job of dismissing the Commission for misconduct. The Commission President’s political pals, the foxes, are the only ones who could sack him. Dismissal requires an open vote with two-thirds majority! No chance of that! The majority are his most stalwart supporters. Any brave soul who broke ranks would be roundly abused for disloyalty. The Commission’s built-in parliamentary majority and the party machine would pressurize the honest MEPs who contemplated becoming turncoats! In the elections, the majority of MEPs and their party allies have chosen, nurtured and influenced the corrupt President in all his policies! The party secretariat picked him. They all not only committed their vote to him but also got the Europeans to vote to create the Parliament's majority that put this political fox in office. This is Europe's best person, they said, to be the referee and arbiter of European politics.
Thus the proposed Lisbon Treaty fails in the essential task of any true democracy: the ability to throw the rascals out! A politicized Commission President will be absolutely free to fund party political foundations and activities from taxpayers' money. No questions asked. Money calms other critics. And extra funding for the main parties will eliminate any difficult grouping (especially those for the poor and oppressed) that opposes them.
This invitation to corruption is not just a local matter affecting only Europe’s half billion people. The dangers of this fatally flawed ‘reform’ are of worldwide importance as we will discuss in the next debate.
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