Calling for the creation of a State of Palestine in 2011 is an obvious incitement to political FRAUD. It has all the hallmarks of what Robert Schuman warned democrats would lead to a disaster. 'Nothing is easier for political counterfeiters to exploit good principles for an illusion, and nothing is more disastrous than good principles that are badly applied.' In that he was agreeing with two French philosophers, Bergson and Maritain.
In 1948 the government of the Holy Land changed its name from 'Palestine' to Israel. Previously it was the Jews who mainly bore the name Palestinians. The Arab population preferred to call themselves simply as Arabs, or Bedouins but more often villagers of a certain place. Nationalism was not a factor.
After World War One, the lack of any strong national identity presented western nations with a problem. When the victorious Allied powers divided up the Ottoman empire and freed the peoples from the yoke of control from Istanbul, they had to carve the borders according to lines on a map, not natural or ethnic boundaries. Ancient Persia had also lost its geographical identity. The other nations had had their boundaries completely changed by the invasion of the Huns, Mongols and Arabs. Massive migrations of populations took place in the first millennium.
The only indigenous people who were sure about boundaries were the Jews. Western people educated in history were also familiar with the boundaries of ancient Israel.
Some of those living in Palestine called themselves southern Syrians. Then there was a large influx of Arabs in the nineteenth century from neighbouring countries who wanted to benefit from the economic revival under the Jews. Many accounts speak of how barren and bare the land was before the immigration of educated Jews.
In this post-Ottoman period after WW1, when the world powers agreed legally to a Mandate to return the land to the Jews, the term Palestine was used. This was because it was the 'normal' but anti-Semitic term that Europeans had used for the land of Israel since around the time of emperor Hadrian in the second century CE. Many in the so-called 'Christian' West did not consider that the term Palestine was abusive.
It was a Latin word used of a long-extinct troublesome mini-state of the Philistines in the extended area of Gaza. The use of iron instead of bronze was known in ancient times, but the Hittites in what is now eastern Turkey were among the first to produce iron goods on an intensive scale. Iron was previously found in meteorites, the mysterious stones that fell from the heavens. They had religious significance. The Egyptian pharaoh, Tutankhamun, had a magnificent steel dagger obtained by his father from the Hittites.
Iron technology is quite different from copper or bronze. The early iron was an oddity. It was brittle and of little practical use, unless special and secret techniques were applied. It also required higher temperatures. It was later found iron ore could produce the same results if special furnaces funneling the prevailing winds could cause the charcoal to blaze extra hot. A range of other trade secrets were developed by the iron-smiths who learned how to make the metal stronger than bronze.
The Philistines in the Gazan towns seemed to have made a cartel agreement with the Hittite empire (or Hatti). That way they could deal with the Egyptians and traders to the east. While the Philistines were not particularly numerous, they were powerfully backed and the iron monopoly gave them power over the Israelites and far beyond in the Grecian islands. They were able to forbid the Israelites from even owning iron tools at the time of the Israelite judges such as Samson. With more abundant iron they could not only make swords but chariot wheels and other armoury that helped them easily to subjugate the surrounding nations.
The cartel power was however as fragile like the early, unskilled iron. The Philistines were also the weak point of this international military-industrial complex. It is there that the Samson, a Danite judge, attacked and brought the cartel-complex down.
Archaeologists have discovered that Philistine houses were often supported on central pillars. Samson destroyed the assembled Philistine leadership by demolishing the two central pillars of the crowded temple of Dagon (Judges 16). With hundreds or thousands of the leaders killed, Philistine power collapsed and they were reduced and eventually exterminated by the Assyrians. The Hittite Empire which also had a highly central administrative structure was invaded and collapsed around this time. The surrounding nations that had suffered cruelly under this oppression made sure that the Philistines disappeared from existence.
The Romans applied the term Philistia or Palestine to the land of the vanquished Jews because of the enormous efforts the Roman Empire had had to destroy Jewish freedom of thought under Vespasian, Titus 67-73 and Hadrian 132-4 CE. The Roman name Palestina implied that it was the land of a totally extinct empire. It had been dead a thousand years. It could be interpreted to mean Dead-as-a-Dodo land.
The Roman enemy name, Palestina, applied only to the land. Nearly all Jews were cleared out. The land reverted to the name of the state of the Philistines that had existed a thousand years before the Roman-Jewish Wars. The state and all its people, the Palestinians or Philistines, were long extinct. Nobody in Roman times called themselves Palestinians even though the land was called Palestina. It was just a bad, anti-Semitic joke. The people called themselves Syrians the name of the Roman province. Some of the Jews who managed to live there were also called Syrians. There are gravestones of 'Syrians' around the Roman Empire, some witness to the fact that some of the 'Syrians' were Jews.
The use of the term Palestine for the Mandate of the League of Nations was bizarre and insensitive. Yet that was how the League and the United Nations created an international legal system to return the land of Israel to the Jews. Palestine was the name of an extinct race, dead for 2800 years. Geographically it defined what must be returned to the Jews, not "Palestinians".
If there were no Palestinians in Roman times how can there be ethnic Palestinians today? Did the people who were dead for the best part of a millennium, spring up and beget children?
If nowadays people call themselves Palestinians it shows (1) they are ignorant of history (2) they are a complete fraud because the Palestinians or Philistines were extinct in 800 BCE; (3) they are anti-Semites because the name of Palestine since Roman times is anti-Semitic abuse. We can add a fourth conclusion: They think that the rest of the world are as ignorant and fraudulent as they are.
Anyone who claims a Palestinian State is an utter fraud and anyone who says he sincerely supports them is foolish. The Europeans set on this self-delusion when after the massive deployment of the Oil Weapon it agreed to the Venice Declaration of 1980. Oil prices in the 1970s were quadrupled and quadrupled again by the oil cartel. A total embargo of oil was targeted on European States who refused to trade the truth for lies under these blackmail conditions. The Europeans agreed to pay for the 'Palestinians'. They began to pay, and pay, and pay. Now European taxpayers are paying for more than half of the cost of all Arab Palestinian refugees, their children and their children's children. All Jewish Palestinian refugees arising from the illegal invasion by Syrian, Egyptians, Jordanian and other foreign armies that were registered under UNRWA have been re-settled more than sixty years ago. The displaced Arab Palestinians were refused a proper home in Arab countries.
Consider an equivalent potential fraud case. The Celtic Britons have been in the British Isles about three thousand years. When the Romans left, some Anglo-Saxon tribes were originally invited to support the Britons in the fifth century. They called the native Celtic Britons the Welsh. What does Welsh mean in Anglo-Saxon? It means Foreigner!
Now consider someone who arrived in the last few years and says I am owner of the British Isles and I can prove it. I am of a tribe which calls itself, Foreigner! That is a double fraud, the use of a name initiated by a later arrival and the name itself obviously fraudulent for an indigenous people.
It is obviously a fraud to claim to come from an extinct nation. Anyone who calls himself Palestinian is a fraud who does not know where the name came from -- the Romans.
If a group, a would-be nation, does not have a history, then it is not a nation. It does not deserve to be considered a nation. It is merely a group of peoples, some who have lived there plus many who arrived only a year or two before 1948.
If this type of fraud becomes a common place other nations had better watch out. Turkey for example. Maybe some group will claim they are descendants of the Hittites, another empire that disappeared from history. No Hittite appears to have been around for more or less the same period. There is no genealogical connection. No trace of continuity. No trace of the blood-lines. How would Turkey react if some Arab migrants now said they were ancient Hittites and claimed all of eastern Turkey? What if they bought favours with oil largesse and blackmail and took the case to the United Nations? Would the other nations in the United General Assembly know or care that the Hittites, and their empire disappeared 3000 years ago?
The reason the nations of the world decided that 'Palestine' should be returned to the Jews was simple. Jews had continuously prayed that they would return to the land during the two thousand years of exile. They mourn the loss of the Temple many times during each year. They remembered the loss of Jerusalem and Israel for more years than most of the States of the world have existed.
Those who managed to move to their ancestral land despite massive persecution tended the graves of their patriarchs, there. Joseph's and Joshua's tombs were tended at Shechem. Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Israel and other patriarchs were honoured near Hebron, and Rachel's near Bethlehem. They kept up the rituals for celebrating their forefathers that had with extreme difficulty been handed down over centuries by courageous Jews who returned. The presence and the claim for the land of Israel has been continuous for two thousand years.
King David is also commemorated in Hebron as he is in the city of David, Jerusalem. Under David the cartel was broken and iron was produced in abundance, 1Chron 22. The earth of the land is full of archaeological treasures proving this Israelite connection, including seals of personalities mentioned in the Bible. The 2000-year old Dead Sea Scrolls containing parts of nearly all the books in the Hebrew Bible were found in the Judean desert, on the so-called 'West Bank'. Today some Hebrews can trace their genealogies back to the twelve tribes of Israel. It is an obligation and condition for priests, Levites and Israelites when they participate in some the synagogue rituals of the community worldwide.
There were no finds of Philistines dating more recently than 2800 years ago! Palestinians and Philistines are extinct.
23 September, 2011
14 September, 2011
Eretz1:Democracies Beware! The Declaration of a SECOND Palestine is a Declaration of War!
If the European Union leadership supports the recognition of a new State called Palestine, it will be co-responsible for further conflict and war. The area has already seen too much death and destruction, hate and ignorance.
The Government of Palestine already exists. Its name is now Israel. Making a SECOND Palestine is a recipe for disaster. It will bring rivalry, conflict and a war of legitimacy. Encouraging this folly is encouraging a bloody catastrophe!
If European or other leaders recognize a SECOND Palestine, based on Saudi-style Sharia law and excluding Jews, Christians, Baha'is and other religions, it will initiate an endless conflict. It could well end in embroiling the EU and North America in a new Middle Eastern war. Ignorance is no excuse. Two Palestines cannot claim the same land. One is legitimate and the other is an outright fraud. One is tolerant, the other praises its martyrs or suicide bombers.
Which Palestine is the real one? Like the two women who came to King Solomon for judgement, only one can be the real mother of the baby that they disputed, 1Kings 3:16. Is it the one whose charter would eliminate all Jews and Christians?
Look at this document.
Note the letterhead: GOVERNMENT OF PALESTINE ! Note the city : JERUSALEM.
Before the State of Israel was proclaimed in 1948, a Government of Palestine existed with its capital at Jerusalem. This is a British Mandate official document. Note the British seal. The Mandate of Palestine was set up by international law to return the government of the Land of Israel to the people of Israel, who had been scattered, persecuted, tortured and terrorized for around 70 generations.
The text reads:
It is signed by an official called Salomon.
Mr Josef Pollak is Jewish and a Palestinian. At this time everyone in Paris and in Europe understood the term Palestinian to mean Jewish citizen under the Mandate living in the former Land of Israel.
What does PALESTINE mean? It is a Roman term. It is the Roman way of pronouncing Philistine. It was applied after the Roman Empire had wiped out the last effort at Jewish independence in the second century. It is anti-Semitic abuse. It was used to show that the land was cleared of Jews. Israel or Judah became Judenrein, (to use Hitler's term). That is Jews were for a time cleared out and banned from entering the own home territory. However over the succeeding centuries, the Jews re-entered and always maintained a presence there, not only in Judea and Samaria but also Gaza, the home of some Jewish sages.
Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople, nowadays called Istanbul. The Roman Empire finally fell when its capital at Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. In Europe people still used the term Palestine. It is found on old maps and those in many Bibles. It is not a Biblical name. The Christian 'New Testament' uses the term Land of Israel, even when the Romans were in control with the Herodian dynasty. (See Matthew chapter 2 v21).
Who were the Philistines, the Palestinians?
They were a small group of a few tens of thousands of people who occupied four or five towns in what is now the Gaza strip. They gained their power because of alliances with Egypt and some other Mediterranean powers because they sat on the gateway of the trading route between Mesopotamia, via Israel to Egypt. They also maintained a monopoly of the iron industry which was then the latest war technology. They succeeded in creating a cartel system in iron production with the Hittite empire in what is now Turkey, but this empire also disappeared from later history.
After wars with the Israelites and others, they were wiped out or absorbed three thousand years ago. The remaining Philistines living in the towns of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, Gaza and Ekron were killed in the time of Joash king of Israel in the eighth century (see Amos 1:8). This was accomplished efficiently by the brutal Assyrians when they invaded from the N.E.
Today there are no Philistines in Ashdod or Ashkelon, nor Gaza or Gath. The Philistines no longer exist. Nor had they existed for centuries before Rome itself was founded. The Romans had to dig far back into history to find a insult big enough to abuse the Jews.
Why? Because the Jewish revolt in the first and second centuries involved the mobilisation of many of the Roman legions and a huge amount of imperial resources. That a small people could defy the Roman Empire was a huge insult to the imperial Caesars. It was not enough to slaughter them and render the remainder slaves of no worth. They chose to name the land after a small trading people of a few thousands that was a cause of irritation by their culture and war over the centuries.
The term Philistine still exists as an insult. It means uncultured person. Perhaps it derived its force from the fact that the Philistines ate dogs and pigs as archaelogy shows. The masses of drinking vessels show they were enthusiastic beer-drinkers, which was probably also a source of trouble.
In the same way the abusive term Palestine, that is, Philistia still existed as an insult until the last century. It is no surprise that Jews did not want to keep this vile name. There was never a State called Palestine nor a Government -- until the British revived the term and used it to create the Government of Palestine for the Jewish Homeland.
The British passports before the end of the Mandate are stamped
Palestinian Citizen.
That is exactly how the family of Moshe Dayan are classified. Information is written in English, Hebrew and Arabic. Both parents of Moshe Dayan, Dvora and Shmuel, and General Dayan himself were classified by the British under international law as Palestinians.
When foreign armies tried to invade the land, Dayan and other leaders resisted. (The black eye-patched Dayan lost an eye in Syria during WW2 fighting under British command.)
In 1948, the new government changed the name of their beleaguered country officially to what it had been two thousand years ago: ISRAEL.
Like the previous Government of Palestine, it comprised Jews and Arabs, Baha'is, Druzes, Muslims, Christians, atheists and agnostics and other religions in a multi-cultural Jewish State. It became the State and Government of Israel by the proclamation of a name change on 14 May 1948. The idea of tolerance comes directly from the Torah and the rest of the Bible.
You shall love your neighbour as yourself, Leviticus 19 v18.
Democracy, said Schuman, derives from exactly the same Biblical principles.
Some, perhaps most of the 'Arab' Palestinians as Ben Gurion observed were actually Jews who had for generations been in the land and had been forcefully converted to Islam. Recent DNA tests and analysis of their customs indicate it may be the majority of the residents.
Thus the Government of Palestine is now called the Government of Israel. This was the original intention of the Mandate system. After WW1, it was set in law by the Allies and agreed by nearly all the States of the world, who became members of the the League of Nations and then members of the United Nations. It is written in the UN Charter. Other States such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq which were part of the Ottoman Empire owe their legitimacy to these legal agreements as much as Israel.
The only thing that was not clear was the final designation of the name of the State. The choice of the name Israel was hardly a shock as it had been published by the British and other States for decades.
Thousand or millions of paper and metal documents attest to it. The identity of the Palestine with Israel was long recognized since the 1920s by the British and world authorities. How can Europeans, Americans and others know today? How can the leaders of the democracies be absolutely and legally sure that Palestine = Israel?
All they have to do is to look at any stamp or any coin of the Mandate period. There you will find Palestine in English, Hebrew and Arabic. You will also find two Hebrew letters Aleph Yod. This stands for Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel.
Every coin and every stamp of the period is living proof that Palestine Mandate territory and the Land of Israel are identical.
The Government of Palestine already exists. Its name is now Israel. Making a SECOND Palestine is a recipe for disaster. It will bring rivalry, conflict and a war of legitimacy. Encouraging this folly is encouraging a bloody catastrophe!
If European or other leaders recognize a SECOND Palestine, based on Saudi-style Sharia law and excluding Jews, Christians, Baha'is and other religions, it will initiate an endless conflict. It could well end in embroiling the EU and North America in a new Middle Eastern war. Ignorance is no excuse. Two Palestines cannot claim the same land. One is legitimate and the other is an outright fraud. One is tolerant, the other praises its martyrs or suicide bombers.
Which Palestine is the real one? Like the two women who came to King Solomon for judgement, only one can be the real mother of the baby that they disputed, 1Kings 3:16. Is it the one whose charter would eliminate all Jews and Christians?
Look at this document.
Note the letterhead: GOVERNMENT OF PALESTINE ! Note the city : JERUSALEM.
Before the State of Israel was proclaimed in 1948, a Government of Palestine existed with its capital at Jerusalem. This is a British Mandate official document. Note the British seal. The Mandate of Palestine was set up by international law to return the government of the Land of Israel to the people of Israel, who had been scattered, persecuted, tortured and terrorized for around 70 generations.
The text reads:
Dear Mr Erlanger,
This is to introduce Mr Josef Pollak a young Palestinian Singer who is to visit Paris.
It is signed by an official called Salomon.
Mr Josef Pollak is Jewish and a Palestinian. At this time everyone in Paris and in Europe understood the term Palestinian to mean Jewish citizen under the Mandate living in the former Land of Israel.
What does PALESTINE mean? It is a Roman term. It is the Roman way of pronouncing Philistine. It was applied after the Roman Empire had wiped out the last effort at Jewish independence in the second century. It is anti-Semitic abuse. It was used to show that the land was cleared of Jews. Israel or Judah became Judenrein, (to use Hitler's term). That is Jews were for a time cleared out and banned from entering the own home territory. However over the succeeding centuries, the Jews re-entered and always maintained a presence there, not only in Judea and Samaria but also Gaza, the home of some Jewish sages.
Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople, nowadays called Istanbul. The Roman Empire finally fell when its capital at Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. In Europe people still used the term Palestine. It is found on old maps and those in many Bibles. It is not a Biblical name. The Christian 'New Testament' uses the term Land of Israel, even when the Romans were in control with the Herodian dynasty. (See Matthew chapter 2 v21).
Who were the Philistines, the Palestinians?
They were a small group of a few tens of thousands of people who occupied four or five towns in what is now the Gaza strip. They gained their power because of alliances with Egypt and some other Mediterranean powers because they sat on the gateway of the trading route between Mesopotamia, via Israel to Egypt. They also maintained a monopoly of the iron industry which was then the latest war technology. They succeeded in creating a cartel system in iron production with the Hittite empire in what is now Turkey, but this empire also disappeared from later history.
After wars with the Israelites and others, they were wiped out or absorbed three thousand years ago. The remaining Philistines living in the towns of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, Gaza and Ekron were killed in the time of Joash king of Israel in the eighth century (see Amos 1:8). This was accomplished efficiently by the brutal Assyrians when they invaded from the N.E.
'I will send a fire on the wall of Gaza ... and I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod, and him that holds the sceptre from Ashkelon, and I will turn mine hand against Ekron and the remnant of the Philistines shall perish.'
Today there are no Philistines in Ashdod or Ashkelon, nor Gaza or Gath. The Philistines no longer exist. Nor had they existed for centuries before Rome itself was founded. The Romans had to dig far back into history to find a insult big enough to abuse the Jews.
Why? Because the Jewish revolt in the first and second centuries involved the mobilisation of many of the Roman legions and a huge amount of imperial resources. That a small people could defy the Roman Empire was a huge insult to the imperial Caesars. It was not enough to slaughter them and render the remainder slaves of no worth. They chose to name the land after a small trading people of a few thousands that was a cause of irritation by their culture and war over the centuries.
The term Philistine still exists as an insult. It means uncultured person. Perhaps it derived its force from the fact that the Philistines ate dogs and pigs as archaelogy shows. The masses of drinking vessels show they were enthusiastic beer-drinkers, which was probably also a source of trouble.
In the same way the abusive term Palestine, that is, Philistia still existed as an insult until the last century. It is no surprise that Jews did not want to keep this vile name. There was never a State called Palestine nor a Government -- until the British revived the term and used it to create the Government of Palestine for the Jewish Homeland.
The British passports before the end of the Mandate are stamped
Palestinian Citizen.
That is exactly how the family of Moshe Dayan are classified. Information is written in English, Hebrew and Arabic. Both parents of Moshe Dayan, Dvora and Shmuel, and General Dayan himself were classified by the British under international law as Palestinians.
When foreign armies tried to invade the land, Dayan and other leaders resisted. (The black eye-patched Dayan lost an eye in Syria during WW2 fighting under British command.)
In 1948, the new government changed the name of their beleaguered country officially to what it had been two thousand years ago: ISRAEL.
Like the previous Government of Palestine, it comprised Jews and Arabs, Baha'is, Druzes, Muslims, Christians, atheists and agnostics and other religions in a multi-cultural Jewish State. It became the State and Government of Israel by the proclamation of a name change on 14 May 1948. The idea of tolerance comes directly from the Torah and the rest of the Bible.
You shall love your neighbour as yourself, Leviticus 19 v18.
Democracy, said Schuman, derives from exactly the same Biblical principles.
Some, perhaps most of the 'Arab' Palestinians as Ben Gurion observed were actually Jews who had for generations been in the land and had been forcefully converted to Islam. Recent DNA tests and analysis of their customs indicate it may be the majority of the residents.
Thus the Government of Palestine is now called the Government of Israel. This was the original intention of the Mandate system. After WW1, it was set in law by the Allies and agreed by nearly all the States of the world, who became members of the the League of Nations and then members of the United Nations. It is written in the UN Charter. Other States such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq which were part of the Ottoman Empire owe their legitimacy to these legal agreements as much as Israel.
The only thing that was not clear was the final designation of the name of the State. The choice of the name Israel was hardly a shock as it had been published by the British and other States for decades.
Thousand or millions of paper and metal documents attest to it. The identity of the Palestine with Israel was long recognized since the 1920s by the British and world authorities. How can Europeans, Americans and others know today? How can the leaders of the democracies be absolutely and legally sure that Palestine = Israel?
All they have to do is to look at any stamp or any coin of the Mandate period. There you will find Palestine in English, Hebrew and Arabic. You will also find two Hebrew letters Aleph Yod. This stands for Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel.
Every coin and every stamp of the period is living proof that Palestine Mandate territory and the Land of Israel are identical.
07 September, 2011
Monnet8: Is Jean Monnet to blame for the euro crisis and the EU's financial black-hole?
Is Jean Monnet responsible for the euro debacle? Did a flaw in the 'Monnet Method' bring about today's financial crisis and the black hole into which billions of taxpayers' money are being poured? That's what one Eurocrat implied, as quoted in the Economist newsmagazine: 'The European Union was not designed to deal with a crisis'. Blame Jean Monnet, says the Economist's columnist, Charlemagne.
Eurocrats should know better. They should know more about the institution they work for, its values and its real history. Unfortunately Monnet and his over-enthusiastic fans and publicists set Europe on a false track. What exactly IS the 'Monnet Method'? You need to know: your bank balance may depend on understanding the facts!
Some politicians still believe that Jean Monnet was the architect behind the European Union. This is false, as any competent historian knows. Monnet did not invent the European Community; it was in existence before he even first uttered the term on 21 June 1950, regardless of the false claims of his Memoirs. Schuman announced the European strategy at the United Nations in 1949!
States can form international currencies with other States either by force or by means of a solid agreement. Alexander the Great used the first method 2300 years ago when he conquered the Medo-Persian empire and imposed his own monetary system, based on gold and silver. In nineteenth and early twentieth century some States agreed to the gold standard. But the Latin Monetary Union (1865- 1926) fell apart on disagreements about silver. Then first the UK (with the Sterling zone) and later the US, 1971, took their currency off the gold standard.
Any bad management of the dollar -- which is designed mainly for a domestic electorate -- has worldwide implications, and that includes wars and bloodshed. So does any other corrupt currency. (Monetary dishonesty encourages internal and external opponents to exploit the politicians' vulnerability.)
The depreciation of the dollar meant that Arab oil producers gained a little bit less for a barrel of oil. The Americans got the same barrel of oil. Although they were already hyper-rich, the oil sheikhs wanted more. They used this as one excuse to launch an attempted war of annihilation against Israel. The Arab exporters then realised that Americans and Europeans were 'hooked' on petroleum. They nationalised the oil companies. From then on they formed a cartel and succeeded to blackmail by the oil weapon and oil embargoes throughout the decade. Now Europe's Human Rights values are under threat by such States that wish to establish a Christian-free and anti-Semitic entity based on Saudi style Sharia law that they would call Palestine.
(Palestine is actually the name of the Jewish State that all the world's governments agreed to after WW1. It was a mandate given by the League of Nations to Palestinian Jews and confirmed by the United Nations in its Charter. The government of Palestine changed the name to Israel in 1948 when a State of Israel was proclaimed. When false or depreciating money reigns, Truth more easily becomes 'lies' and lies become the 'truth'.)
Thus any weakness or fraud in a monetary system has untold and often mammoth implications in politics. The reverse of this is also true. A solid, well-founded monetary system, based on sound ethics, has a major decontaminating and purifying effect on politics. Robert Schuman used to quote the Baron Louis, Finance Minister under France's Second Empire:
IF it is properly implemented, this Community approach provides the best hope for the future. The idea of a new European currency was announced by Robert Schuman in his Declaration of 9 May 1950. Schuman had great expertise in finance and monetary affairs and stabilized France's ruinous finances as Minister of Finance and Prime Minister. He criticised Hitler's ramshackle financial and monetary sysyem of the 1930s. Before the war he helped Austria defend itself financially against Nazi aggression. It nearly cost him his life when later he was arrested by the Gestapo. After the war he helped create the European Payments Union in July 1950. The politicians later abandoned this but had to try to re-invent it when they wanted to create the euro.
The creation of a supranational monetary system depends on fully understanding a supranational Community system. It is based on trust, that is democracy writ large. Here Monnet made a grave mistake.
Monnet's flawed action is another proof that he did not conceive of the idea of a supranational Community. When Paul Reuter, Schuman's legal aide, presented him with a draft document of the Schuman Declaration he crossed out the word, supranational, saying he did not like it. Nor was Monnet able to explain how the European Community was able to bring peace to nation States that had been at war almost continuously for 2000 years. Schuman could and did.
Some politicians say they are proceeding on the basis of the so-called 'Monnet Method'. What is the 'Monnet Method'? No one can properly define it. It is pure PR -- public relations hype. It is foisted on a public by a political class that did not want to deal with the spiritual fundamentals of democracy. It is a chimera that allows politicians to do what they like, without principles or even democratic accountability. That makes it an international system, not a supranational democratic one.
The supranational Community, in contrast, is a scientific discovery, to use Schuman's term, that requires education, training and another quality, humility, listening to others. It does not involve foisting treaties on people who have refused them in many referendums. Democracy, said Schuman, is at the service of the people and acts in agreement with the people.
What is a more serious accusation than aggrandisement is: Was Monnet responsible for the mess we are in? Was it his lack of understanding of the Community system that has led to the financial and monetary loopholes and hence the abuses now costing hundreds of billions of euros?
Monnet was only at the Commission (High Authority) of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) for a couple of years. His responsibility there was to see that the Treaty of Paris was fully implemented. It was not. He was to serve the people, all the people, including organized civil society. His period there was long enough to cause a loophole that the politicians made into an entrance and climbed in to do damage and get their fingers on to European money.
Monnet was instrumental in cutting out (in collusion with the politicians/ ministers) the democratic representation of organized civil society in the consultative committees. This was one of five essential organs for supranational Community.
In Monnet's time the first European Community had a Consultative Committee which was designed as its successors to be in close liaison with the Commission. It was divided into three sections: consumers of coal and steel products, entrepreneurs and trade unions working in the sectors. They kept a close watch on the money, how it was raised and how it was spent. They made sure that the budget was balanced. In those days there was a European tax and it was spent according to the wishes of the taxpayers.
The Treaty of Paris said that the Consultative Committee should be elected on a European basis. However, there were no European associations in some areas. The treaty said that the first Consultative Committee could create a system especially for this in the near future. In the interim the Committee was composed of a mixture of various national organisations.
European organisations were formed. But the Commission/ High Authority under Monnet never changed the system or encouraged the responsible people to do so. The politicians were happy at this because it meant that they nominated or decided who should be on this crucial debating chamber. They also managed the membership to the European Parliamentary Assembly. That way they could control the criticism by electing more placid members. The three great seats of European democracy will eventually all be independent: the Council representing national States, the Parliament representing the individual and his or her rights and the Consultative Committee representing all organizations in the sectors.
Any professional organization, whether a professional organization of steel makers, or an association of steel consumers or an association of European trades unions, has democratic rules. They are not the same as parliaments but not inferior to them as they have to be agreed by votes of the membership. This is an essential layer of democracy that should be independent of political parties and, amongst other tasks, can keep an eye on them.
De Gaulle and many other politicians did not like the idea of consumer organisations, together with entrepreneurs and labour unions holding politicians to their word. That is why de Gaulle arrested their development. He did not stop them developing, merely froze them for a time. Schuman and Reuter (who wrote the Schuman Declaration), declared ILLEGAL the politicians' subterfuge aimed at not having a fully democratic consultative committee with its own European elections. And sure enough, de Gaulle got away with illegal and corrupt measures such as Wine Lakes and Meat Mountains.
In the Gaullist period of European stagnation, the Parliamentary Assembly was nominated by a clique of politicians, its revisions to legislation ignored. The Consultative Committees including the Economic and Social Committee and the Scientific and Technical Committee of Euratom, were frozen and ignored. They are still at the infantile level of development that the European Parliament was until around 1980.
If Monnet had set up the Consultative Committee on a fully democratic European basis, a powerful democratic institution would have existed that would have resisted de Gaulle's attempts to destroy and freeze the Community system. We would be living in a much more successful and prosperous Europe, even than ours today. And it would have been a shining example of democracy to the world, including the States on the south bank of the Mediterranean. Democracy and higher civic standards would have flourished across the whole Mediterranean zone and as far north as the Arctic. Instead under nationalists and Gaullists, Algeria -- which was part of the European Coal and Steel area -- entered a period of bloody strife and warfare.
None of the euro crisis would have arisen if the members of a currency zone had proper civil society scrutiny of the fraudulent statistics and toxic buddy-buddy deals that the politicians come up with at the closed door Council meetings and eurozone rencontres.
Schuman also said that these meetings should all be open. The Lisbon treaty also says this but the politicians do not care a hoot when they close the doors. The next step is to use the European Court -- one of the five institutions that Schuman said was essential. Some actions in the 27 national courts could also stop much of this abuse. Discussions on the Budget -- that is taxation -- are also closed to the press, something which is both illegal and would be totally intolerable in any of the democratic Member States. (see www.schuman.info/budget8.htm ) No taxation should take place without FAIR representation and OPEN debate. That is central to European civic values.
There are three main types of international currency systems. (A fourth involves the informal use of a national currency like the US dollar by external trading partners.)
Firstly there is the international system (agreement of States) that Europe now has, thanks to Monnet's indecision. There is the imperial currency system of a non-democratic authoritarian system like the ruble of the Soviet system or the closed system of Mao's China. The banknotes cannot circulate much beyond the borders of the empire, because they are artificial. In the 1930s Hitler had a similar system where the Nazi party dictated the monetary policy on its neighbouring or trading partners. Europe has aspects of this monetary authoritarianism, because the euro rules are made and then ignored by a small cartel of politicians. The politicians think that they alone should impose their choice on who runs the system, not the public, nor the companies or workers, nor the buyers, traders and consumers.
Thirdly there is a real supranational currency. Supranational means a European democratic system, not imposed authoritarianism. It is so defined in the treaties and by Schuman -- see www.schuman.info/supra5.htm . Solid monetary policy will be made once this democratic foundation is followed. It involves agreement at three levels: the States that is not just the Council of Ministers but their 27 national democratic systems PLUS organised civil society (the Consultative Committees entrepreneurs, workers and consumers, of the treaties which need to be democratically elected as the treaties say) PLUS the individuals' interest (through the EP and Court petitions and judgements).
The euro crisis will not be solved by a further smoke and mirrors approach of eurobonds involving either the ECB or some other artificial institution without democratic legitimacy. Moritz Kraemer, Standard & Poor's managing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa sovereign ratings, speaking at the Alpbach European Forum, said, “If we have a euro bond where Germany guarantees 27%, France 20 and Greece 2% then the rating of the euro bond would be CC, which is the rating of Greece." That applies also to shuffling the cards in a new card trick or rather paper con trick.
Politicians have already tried to dispose with elements of the supranational system. Now some want them back, having seen their great utility. At the beginning, the supranational European Community system had not only its own European tax system with democratic control down to a local level but also a European loan system. This was not based on a fiat system of some politicians acting within the secret chambers of the Council or the 'informal' eurozone committee. In the 1950s the loans were raised on world markets based on real economic achievement and a real programme. That delivered real goods for the future. The loans were based on solid evidence of economic progress, improved employment data and general economic integration with real cost benefits.
The ECSC loan system -- which was a bigger operation than the European Investment Bank -- had outline supranational democratic control. The politicians did not like it. Around 2000 they egotistically got rid of this loan system and the European tax system by deciding not to renew the ECSC treaty. They wanted tax, loans and money without proper democratic representation. Their word would be enough, they said. Then the politicians abused their own buddy-buddy system. The markets saw its toxicity. They had been doing dirty deals for decades. Banks of course did the same thing, saying that if the politicians could get away with fraud, so could they in a property bubble and financial market fraud.
The way forward is to put the democratic control and the support of half a billion Europeans behind a reform programme. Only thus can a solid European money be agreed, formed and circulated.
Eurocrats should know better. They should know more about the institution they work for, its values and its real history. Unfortunately Monnet and his over-enthusiastic fans and publicists set Europe on a false track. What exactly IS the 'Monnet Method'? You need to know: your bank balance may depend on understanding the facts!
Some politicians still believe that Jean Monnet was the architect behind the European Union. This is false, as any competent historian knows. Monnet did not invent the European Community; it was in existence before he even first uttered the term on 21 June 1950, regardless of the false claims of his Memoirs. Schuman announced the European strategy at the United Nations in 1949!
States can form international currencies with other States either by force or by means of a solid agreement. Alexander the Great used the first method 2300 years ago when he conquered the Medo-Persian empire and imposed his own monetary system, based on gold and silver. In nineteenth and early twentieth century some States agreed to the gold standard. But the Latin Monetary Union (1865- 1926) fell apart on disagreements about silver. Then first the UK (with the Sterling zone) and later the US, 1971, took their currency off the gold standard.
Any bad management of the dollar -- which is designed mainly for a domestic electorate -- has worldwide implications, and that includes wars and bloodshed. So does any other corrupt currency. (Monetary dishonesty encourages internal and external opponents to exploit the politicians' vulnerability.)
The depreciation of the dollar meant that Arab oil producers gained a little bit less for a barrel of oil. The Americans got the same barrel of oil. Although they were already hyper-rich, the oil sheikhs wanted more. They used this as one excuse to launch an attempted war of annihilation against Israel. The Arab exporters then realised that Americans and Europeans were 'hooked' on petroleum. They nationalised the oil companies. From then on they formed a cartel and succeeded to blackmail by the oil weapon and oil embargoes throughout the decade. Now Europe's Human Rights values are under threat by such States that wish to establish a Christian-free and anti-Semitic entity based on Saudi style Sharia law that they would call Palestine.
(Palestine is actually the name of the Jewish State that all the world's governments agreed to after WW1. It was a mandate given by the League of Nations to Palestinian Jews and confirmed by the United Nations in its Charter. The government of Palestine changed the name to Israel in 1948 when a State of Israel was proclaimed. When false or depreciating money reigns, Truth more easily becomes 'lies' and lies become the 'truth'.)
Thus any weakness or fraud in a monetary system has untold and often mammoth implications in politics. The reverse of this is also true. A solid, well-founded monetary system, based on sound ethics, has a major decontaminating and purifying effect on politics. Robert Schuman used to quote the Baron Louis, Finance Minister under France's Second Empire:
Make sound finances for me and I will make for you a sound policy.Schuman confirmed this truism from his own long study of the monetary history. Based on those principles, a new system was introduced in world history with the creation of a supranational Community system. Without it, Europe would be in no position even to think of a common currency.
IF it is properly implemented, this Community approach provides the best hope for the future. The idea of a new European currency was announced by Robert Schuman in his Declaration of 9 May 1950. Schuman had great expertise in finance and monetary affairs and stabilized France's ruinous finances as Minister of Finance and Prime Minister. He criticised Hitler's ramshackle financial and monetary sysyem of the 1930s. Before the war he helped Austria defend itself financially against Nazi aggression. It nearly cost him his life when later he was arrested by the Gestapo. After the war he helped create the European Payments Union in July 1950. The politicians later abandoned this but had to try to re-invent it when they wanted to create the euro.
The creation of a supranational monetary system depends on fully understanding a supranational Community system. It is based on trust, that is democracy writ large. Here Monnet made a grave mistake.
Monnet's flawed action is another proof that he did not conceive of the idea of a supranational Community. When Paul Reuter, Schuman's legal aide, presented him with a draft document of the Schuman Declaration he crossed out the word, supranational, saying he did not like it. Nor was Monnet able to explain how the European Community was able to bring peace to nation States that had been at war almost continuously for 2000 years. Schuman could and did.
Some politicians say they are proceeding on the basis of the so-called 'Monnet Method'. What is the 'Monnet Method'? No one can properly define it. It is pure PR -- public relations hype. It is foisted on a public by a political class that did not want to deal with the spiritual fundamentals of democracy. It is a chimera that allows politicians to do what they like, without principles or even democratic accountability. That makes it an international system, not a supranational democratic one.
The supranational Community, in contrast, is a scientific discovery, to use Schuman's term, that requires education, training and another quality, humility, listening to others. It does not involve foisting treaties on people who have refused them in many referendums. Democracy, said Schuman, is at the service of the people and acts in agreement with the people.
What is a more serious accusation than aggrandisement is: Was Monnet responsible for the mess we are in? Was it his lack of understanding of the Community system that has led to the financial and monetary loopholes and hence the abuses now costing hundreds of billions of euros?
Monnet was only at the Commission (High Authority) of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) for a couple of years. His responsibility there was to see that the Treaty of Paris was fully implemented. It was not. He was to serve the people, all the people, including organized civil society. His period there was long enough to cause a loophole that the politicians made into an entrance and climbed in to do damage and get their fingers on to European money.
Monnet was instrumental in cutting out (in collusion with the politicians/ ministers) the democratic representation of organized civil society in the consultative committees. This was one of five essential organs for supranational Community.
In Monnet's time the first European Community had a Consultative Committee which was designed as its successors to be in close liaison with the Commission. It was divided into three sections: consumers of coal and steel products, entrepreneurs and trade unions working in the sectors. They kept a close watch on the money, how it was raised and how it was spent. They made sure that the budget was balanced. In those days there was a European tax and it was spent according to the wishes of the taxpayers.
The Treaty of Paris said that the Consultative Committee should be elected on a European basis. However, there were no European associations in some areas. The treaty said that the first Consultative Committee could create a system especially for this in the near future. In the interim the Committee was composed of a mixture of various national organisations.
European organisations were formed. But the Commission/ High Authority under Monnet never changed the system or encouraged the responsible people to do so. The politicians were happy at this because it meant that they nominated or decided who should be on this crucial debating chamber. They also managed the membership to the European Parliamentary Assembly. That way they could control the criticism by electing more placid members. The three great seats of European democracy will eventually all be independent: the Council representing national States, the Parliament representing the individual and his or her rights and the Consultative Committee representing all organizations in the sectors.
Any professional organization, whether a professional organization of steel makers, or an association of steel consumers or an association of European trades unions, has democratic rules. They are not the same as parliaments but not inferior to them as they have to be agreed by votes of the membership. This is an essential layer of democracy that should be independent of political parties and, amongst other tasks, can keep an eye on them.
De Gaulle and many other politicians did not like the idea of consumer organisations, together with entrepreneurs and labour unions holding politicians to their word. That is why de Gaulle arrested their development. He did not stop them developing, merely froze them for a time. Schuman and Reuter (who wrote the Schuman Declaration), declared ILLEGAL the politicians' subterfuge aimed at not having a fully democratic consultative committee with its own European elections. And sure enough, de Gaulle got away with illegal and corrupt measures such as Wine Lakes and Meat Mountains.
In the Gaullist period of European stagnation, the Parliamentary Assembly was nominated by a clique of politicians, its revisions to legislation ignored. The Consultative Committees including the Economic and Social Committee and the Scientific and Technical Committee of Euratom, were frozen and ignored. They are still at the infantile level of development that the European Parliament was until around 1980.
If Monnet had set up the Consultative Committee on a fully democratic European basis, a powerful democratic institution would have existed that would have resisted de Gaulle's attempts to destroy and freeze the Community system. We would be living in a much more successful and prosperous Europe, even than ours today. And it would have been a shining example of democracy to the world, including the States on the south bank of the Mediterranean. Democracy and higher civic standards would have flourished across the whole Mediterranean zone and as far north as the Arctic. Instead under nationalists and Gaullists, Algeria -- which was part of the European Coal and Steel area -- entered a period of bloody strife and warfare.
None of the euro crisis would have arisen if the members of a currency zone had proper civil society scrutiny of the fraudulent statistics and toxic buddy-buddy deals that the politicians come up with at the closed door Council meetings and eurozone rencontres.
Schuman also said that these meetings should all be open. The Lisbon treaty also says this but the politicians do not care a hoot when they close the doors. The next step is to use the European Court -- one of the five institutions that Schuman said was essential. Some actions in the 27 national courts could also stop much of this abuse. Discussions on the Budget -- that is taxation -- are also closed to the press, something which is both illegal and would be totally intolerable in any of the democratic Member States. (see www.schuman.info/budget8.htm ) No taxation should take place without FAIR representation and OPEN debate. That is central to European civic values.
There are three main types of international currency systems. (A fourth involves the informal use of a national currency like the US dollar by external trading partners.)
Firstly there is the international system (agreement of States) that Europe now has, thanks to Monnet's indecision. There is the imperial currency system of a non-democratic authoritarian system like the ruble of the Soviet system or the closed system of Mao's China. The banknotes cannot circulate much beyond the borders of the empire, because they are artificial. In the 1930s Hitler had a similar system where the Nazi party dictated the monetary policy on its neighbouring or trading partners. Europe has aspects of this monetary authoritarianism, because the euro rules are made and then ignored by a small cartel of politicians. The politicians think that they alone should impose their choice on who runs the system, not the public, nor the companies or workers, nor the buyers, traders and consumers.
Thirdly there is a real supranational currency. Supranational means a European democratic system, not imposed authoritarianism. It is so defined in the treaties and by Schuman -- see www.schuman.info/supra5.htm . Solid monetary policy will be made once this democratic foundation is followed. It involves agreement at three levels: the States that is not just the Council of Ministers but their 27 national democratic systems PLUS organised civil society (the Consultative Committees entrepreneurs, workers and consumers, of the treaties which need to be democratically elected as the treaties say) PLUS the individuals' interest (through the EP and Court petitions and judgements).
The euro crisis will not be solved by a further smoke and mirrors approach of eurobonds involving either the ECB or some other artificial institution without democratic legitimacy. Moritz Kraemer, Standard & Poor's managing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa sovereign ratings, speaking at the Alpbach European Forum, said, “If we have a euro bond where Germany guarantees 27%, France 20 and Greece 2% then the rating of the euro bond would be CC, which is the rating of Greece." That applies also to shuffling the cards in a new card trick or rather paper con trick.
Politicians have already tried to dispose with elements of the supranational system. Now some want them back, having seen their great utility. At the beginning, the supranational European Community system had not only its own European tax system with democratic control down to a local level but also a European loan system. This was not based on a fiat system of some politicians acting within the secret chambers of the Council or the 'informal' eurozone committee. In the 1950s the loans were raised on world markets based on real economic achievement and a real programme. That delivered real goods for the future. The loans were based on solid evidence of economic progress, improved employment data and general economic integration with real cost benefits.
The ECSC loan system -- which was a bigger operation than the European Investment Bank -- had outline supranational democratic control. The politicians did not like it. Around 2000 they egotistically got rid of this loan system and the European tax system by deciding not to renew the ECSC treaty. They wanted tax, loans and money without proper democratic representation. Their word would be enough, they said. Then the politicians abused their own buddy-buddy system. The markets saw its toxicity. They had been doing dirty deals for decades. Banks of course did the same thing, saying that if the politicians could get away with fraud, so could they in a property bubble and financial market fraud.
The way forward is to put the democratic control and the support of half a billion Europeans behind a reform programme. Only thus can a solid European money be agreed, formed and circulated.
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