Eretz4: The EU corruptly underwrites the Palestinian Mafia

Mafias and criminal gangs often demand of their young, would-be adherents commit an act of theft, violence or even murder. Mafias represent the opposite to civilized society because they rule by violence and by a central violent leadership.

So what should we expect from the European Union whose foreign policy is supposed to encourage Human Rights and the Rule of Law? It should denounce murders. It should expose any operation that glorifies murder as an entrance ticket to Mafia power. Instead the EU is acting exactly in opposite way. It is acting as the scared victim of violence that cannot or will not speak out against injustice and crime.

After vicious arm-twisting by the US Obama administration, the Israelis recently released 26 murderers. Why did the Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Hussein Obama want a democracy to distort and interfere with the judgements its Courts of Justice? Because the Arab Palestinians refused to talk peace with the Israelis and set pre-conditions. To anyone with a couple of brain cells, that should signal a corrupt peace-process.

Why should genuine peace-seekers set pre-conditions? What sort of pre-condition is 'Get my gang of convicted murderers out of prison first!'?

Did the European Union denounce this travesty to disrupt court-based justice? Not at all! Would any European State or its politicians release convicted murderers in similar circumstances?

What do normal civilized European States do when murderers are released from jail? Two things. They try to rehabilitate them but make sure that the population in general is protected from further crime and violence.
What does a Mafia do? It promotes them. What does the Arab Palestinian Authority do when 26 convicted murderers are released? What would YOU do if you had to decide on what to do with

• murderers who dressed as women to kill the female driver who took Arabs to work,
• murderers who threw grenades, set off bombs and helped organize other deaths
• murderer of a man caring for flowers in his greenhouse,
• murderers who stabbed passengers on buses,
• murderers who kidnapped and killed hikers
• murderers who attacked a car and killed its passengers when it entered their village,
• an axe-murderer who killed a 79-year old man reading a book in a park
• murderers who stabbed an orchard-owner with a knife and a pair of pruning shears,
• a murderer who killed a French woman tourist in a restaurant where he worked,
• a member of a gang implicated in the terrorist murder at the holy site of Machpellah cave, the burial place of Abraham, Sarah and Jacob, the patriarch of the twelve tribes of Israel. ????

So what did the Arab Palestinian Administration do? The unelected president of the PA Abbas/ Abu Mazen called the released murderers 'HEROES'!! He celebrated with fireworks. Then he took action.

What?
He divided up the the murderers into two groups. The more vicious killers had been given sentences of more than 25 years by the Courts. Abbas gave all of them 50,000 dollars. That's not all. They were given high paying jobs. They had the choice of becoming Deputy Minister in one of the many Palestinian ministries. Or if they were especially vicious killers they were given the rank of major general in the army also with a fat salary. Those Palestinian terrorists who were sentenced to 15 to 25 years were given the position of Deputy Director at the ministries or a military rank of brigadier general.

'The prisoners are part of our fighters and therefore deserve money,' said the Palestinian Authority. Ahem. Whose money would that be?

How does the European Union recruit its Directors general? Do they look for people who were convicted of murder? Is that the critical condition?

Clearly the PLO want the convicted  murderers -- now generals or policy-makers -- to train other young people to murder other innocent citizens. Isn't this terror game clear to everyone? On recent figures the PA has 75,000 officials and pensioners --twice the number of the EU's officials!

When asked repeatedly, the Commission refused to give any comment at all on this outrage. Why is the EU acting like a scared dog?

The answer is oil. The EU will grind to a halt if the Arabs and OPEC cut off petroleum supplies. They already did this in the 1970s when an oil embargo was placed on all its nations with total embargo on the Netherlands and Denmark. The oil-exporters applied the Oil Weapon to get  Europe to change its foreign policy towards Israel. Blackmail.

The exorbitant profits between the minimal cost of collecting from oil wells, now compounded over forty years amounts to a Money Weapon. It is the source of great global instability. 

The only way Europe can free itself is to become independent in its energy production. Part of the illegal, closed-door deal was that Europe would financially support the so-called Palestinians who mysteriously sprang into existence in 1964. The EU has spent billions on the 'Palestinians' without result whether under Hamas or Fatah. Three out of four 'Palestinians' say the whole administration is corrupt. It doesn't take a genius to work that out. Apparently the EU -- the wealthiest grouping in the world with 500 million brainy citizens -- has no one up to the job.

A report to be published soon says that the 'Palestinians' have squandered some TWO BILLION of EU aid -- lost without proper trace. Why should the hard-pressed European taxpayer put up with it?

So scared is the EU that it only denounces Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. Its EU foreign policy chief denounces the building of garages, kindergarten and homes in Israel's capital Jerusalem. Some 1100 international jurists and professors of law from around the world have written to the EU saying that Israel has every right according to international law to build there and in Judea and Samaria. Instead the misnamed European External Action Service takes a politically prejudiced view that politics trumps international law.

Where is Europe - the defender of Human Rights? Where is the defender of the Rule of Law?

Jihad8: Before acting 'like a monkey with a grenade,' EU should get facts straight on Syrian poison gas attacks

Why is the United States rushing to take military action in Syria BEFORE it has ascertained the facts from the United Nations chemical warfare specialists? The US alleges that the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has exploded chemical weapons with poison gas just a few kms east of Damascus at Ghouta in disputed suburbs of Jobar, Zamalka and Ein Tarma and possibly several others to the south. What will more deaths by US missiles achieve among those like al Nusra/Qaeda who say they 'love death more than life'?

There is no doubt, said US Vice-President Biden, that the Assad regime was responsible. They have the weapons and the means to deliver them, he said. US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said that the US military was ‘ready’ to attack. ‘I think the intelligence will conclude that it wasn’t the rebels who used it, and there will probably be pretty good intelligence to show that the Syria government was responsible,’ he told the BBC. This conclusion was reached before the UN inspectors were given safe passage to view the site and collect materials. Secretary of State Kerry said on Monday 26 August that there was ‘undeniable’ evidence of a large-scale chemical weapons attack on several towns in the Ghouta area. U.S. intelligence, he said, strongly points to Assad’s government as the guilty party. Even if they have intercept correspondence, does this mean that only one side is responsible for poison gas? What are the facts?

1. The timing is suspicious. This latest chemical attack took place on Wednesday 21 August at the time when UN chemical warfare experts had just arrived there to investigate another alleged chemical attack dating back to March. Assad had agreed to talks with rebels. Now they are off. That does not appear to be to Assad’s benefit. The USA said military action was needed immediately. Then Assad agreed to open up the path for inspectors on the 21 August attack. This did not change US policy. The US and UK do not appear to want the results of the UN inspectors investigations.

2. The alleged culprit is dubious. Carla Del Ponte, member of the UN investigating panel on Syrian war crimes, former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, uncovered evidence from casualties and medical staff pointing to ‘strong, concrete suspicions‘ that the rebels, not Assad, were responsible for this March attack. ‘This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.’ A White House spokesman for President Obama disagreed. He said it was likely that President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, not the rebels, were behind any chemical weapons use. After this debunking by UN Senior investigator Carla Del Ponte, the US ceased its insistence on a military attack as response to the loss of life by the poison gas attack.

3. Both sides have chemical arms. Assad’s ambassador told the UN in July that rebels had captured chemical stock. Russia supplied the UN with 80 pages of evidence that can be analyzed. Videos show the Free Syria Army using sarin or poison gas and Saudi chemicals uncovered earlier at Jabar by Assad forces.

4. Neither side are Sunday school teachers. They cheat, lie, and ruthlessly kill opponents. Christians are being crushed. The rebels include foreign jihadis, funded heavily from the Sunni oil States. EU-banned terrorists such as Lebanon’s HezbAllah and Iranian forces like the Revolutionary Guards help Assad while vicious, infidel-hating al-Qaeda groups like Jabhat al-Nusra lead the rebels. Qataris have poured some 3 billions dollars to aid the rebels and Saudi Arabia has supplied arms. The Saudis are now the biggest funder of the rebels. The Assad regime is non-sectarian and various religions have cohabited in Syria.

5. The haste is uncalled for. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin warned the West against acting like a ‘monkey with a hand grenade.’ The Russians also warn against action that has no known forensic evidence to condemn the alleged perpetrator and without UN Security Council accord.

6. Facts are weak. Estimates of fatalities at Ghutta are uncertain. They range from 100 to 1300 people. Why such a hugely uncertain body count? Where are the bodies buried? Russian Foreign Minister Lazrov criticized US impetuosity and scorn for facts: ‘They cannot produce evidence, but keep on saying that the ‘red line’ has been crossed and they cannot wait any longer,’ he said Monday, 26 August. Russian State TV has shown Syrian videos of actors playing the part of victims, being daubed with blood, before shots were taken of the ‘dead’.

7. The timing is politically suspicious. The outcome of this latest chemical weapon attack was the postponement of peace talks between Assad and the mixed-bag ‘Free Syrian Army’. It plays into the hand of the hardliners, paid for by Qataris and other oil-rich Sunnis who want to use every means to remove Assad and his clique. ‘No compromise’ plays into the hand of violent extreme jihadis.

8. The outcome could be catastrophic for Europe. The EU is the world’s largest economic power. It will be deeply affected by Jihadis igniting the Syrian-Lebanese tinder box which will then explode across Israel, Gaza and Egypt. Why has the EU not at least had proper debates in national, European parliament and in the United Nations? Western experts have diverse views on the video evidence some pointing to obvious fraud. The conflict has all the nature of a sectarian dispute between Sunnis, Shiites and the numerous Islamic sects that Jihadis cannot tolerate. These include Ismailis, Twelver Shias, Sufis, Druzes, Yazdis and Bahai.
Syria has a delicate balance of religious populations. The ruling clique is Alawite, a secretive Islamic sect associated with the Shiites. It makes up around 11 percent of the people.  However 60 per cent of the population are Sunni. Christians of various persuasions amount to 13 percent. The Jews which were numerous for thousands of years now reduced to a few hundred.

9. The motivation of the US is unclear. The American leaders are not religious illiterates. President Obama was raised a Sunni Muslim in Indonesia. His father and step-father were both Muslims. His brother Malik Obama is actively propagating Islamic ‘da’wa’ that is the conversion of infidels and infidel countries to Islam. He works with President of Sudan Omar al-Bashir, classified by the USA as a State Sponsor of Terror. Key figures in the Obama security administration have served in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries.

It seems bizarre that the USA is rooting now on the side of just one faction in the Syrian civil war. That side involves Jabhat al Nusra a jihadist Sunni organization, a clone of Al Qaeda. Why on earth would USA support al Qaeda-led rebels against the Shiite Alawite regime of Bashur al Assad?

The EU is founded on religious tolerance, free speech that extends to critical analysis of religious opinions.

The Middle East has been devastated of its Christians from Iraq to the Palestinian Authority and Gaza. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, the leader of the worldwide Anglican church, said we are living in ‘terribly, terribly dangerous times‘. He warned that military intervention could have catastrophic unseen consequences. There are ‘numerous intermediate steps’ between doing nothing and regime change, said Welby who has toured the Middle East and Africa seeking paths for reconciliation.

• Western experts have questioned video that shows unreal white foaming at the mouth. They say that poison gas would produce a yellow retching foam or one covered with blood.
• Victim do not show characteristic pinpoint eyes after poisoning. Sarin is doubted. Little evidence of convulsions or secondary contamination.
• No people attending ‘poisoned’ people had protective clothing.
• No doctors seem affected by poison gas with no reported fatalities among doctors or medical staff.
• Some videos were, according to Russian authorities, broadcast before the  alleged time of the attack!
• Body evidence and numbers remain untestified.

How can the EU cut through the disinformation to the real facts? The European Community system set up by Robert Schuman initiated a scientific centre so that scientific facts can be distinguished from political and ideological narratives. Science is one of those supranational values on which the European Community is based. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre has been called in to investigate frauds in all areas of European life. An escalating Syrian and Middle Eastern religious war will cost all Europeans dear. The JRC should be asked immediately to investigate fraud in video evidence, in medical evidence and chemical analysis. European citizens require this action!

Jihad7: EU's muddled policy encourages all Egypt's politicians to believe the West are enemies

One year after Mohammed Morsi became President of Egypt after a popular revolt against military control, millions of Egyptians again protested, this time at Morsi’s autocratic Muslimist rule. They called for his resignation. The headquarters of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood was gutted and burnt.

The European Union is pumping billions of euros into Egypt. Most of the recent money has been given as a blank check — to President Morsi’s government. What conclusions are democrats in Egypt to make of this folly?

Has the European External Action Service (EEAS) heard of Pavlov’s dog? You can train an animal by feeding for good or bad. If the dog is bad and angry and you give it food out of fear, you reinforce its nastiness to get you to give it more food.

Humans are more complicated and react to psychological stimulus too. But what on earth is the logic behind the vast amounts of taxpayers’ money that European leaders feel they have the freedom to give to corrupt and hostile states? The army has given Morsi’s government 48 hours to listen to the people. The EU imposes no conditions for EU tax money freely given to those that the people call its new despots, the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood, according to documents seized in a US terrorist case, calls for a global ‘Grand Jihad’ sabotaging Western civilization from inside. The terrorist organization Hamas is a Muslim Brotherhood branch. Its constitution declares that its aim to kill all Jews. Other activist organs are found throughout Africa, Asia, and the Americas. In WW2  the Nazi extermination of Jews was fomented and  several SS divisions of Muslims were raised through the Muslim Brotherhood co-founder, Hajj al-Husseini. He later helped create the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) as a Muslim Brotherhood terrorist gang.

It is not only Morsi that the EU should be wary of. Egyptian  leaders from  the Muslimist parties have been filmed saying in private that America and Europe (which supply billions in aid) are their main enemies! Egyptian politicians thought they were speaking in private with President Morsi. Then Morsi shocked them all by saying the meeting was in fact being broadcast by Egypt’s Channel 1 TV. (See it yourself below).

The European taxpayers have been supplying Egypt with around eight billion euros of aid and loans to help a transition to democracy and a more just society. This is nearly equivalent to Cyprus bail-out sums. It is far beyond what the USA supplies as mainly military aid. What is the tax-payer getting in return? Who is in control of the funds?

The EU has lost its vision. The European Community was not created by funding and bribing but by creating a moral and ethical framework for peace. This did not cost billions. It was inexpensive. It was effective. Robert Schuman’s vision started with the basis of Human Rights based on supranational law.

Under Morsi Egypt has not become a more tolerant society towards its 10 percent minority Coptic, its other Christians, its Baha’is, its non-religious communities and its few remaining Jews. EU money to an intolerant despot makes Egypt become a more intolerant society.

Are the various Christians able to build churches and assemble in peace? No. They are still forbidden from building, renovating or even repairing places of worship. Christian girls are forcibly islamized. Non-Muslim men are refused the right to marry whosoever they wish.

What is the West’s policy to intolerant Islamic countries and Sharia law? Many EU governments subsidize  mosques at home together with recycled oil-funds from the Saudis and the OPEC cartel. What principles of mutuality and democracy is the EU applying?

The US Department of State reports that the Christians in Egypt include:

the Armenian Apostolic, Catholic (Armenian, Chaldean, Greek, Melkite, Roman, and Syrian), Maronite, Orthodox (Greek and Syrian), and Anglican/Episcopalian churches, which range in size from several thousand to hundreds of thousands. A Protestant community, established in the mid-19th century, includes the following churches: Presbyterian, Baptist, Brethren, Open Brethren, Revival of Holiness (Nahdat al-Qadaasa), Faith (Al-Eyman), Church of God, Christian Model Church (Al-Mithaal Al-Masihi), Apostolic, Grace (An-Ni’ma), Pentecostal, Apostolic Grace, Church of Christ, Gospel Missionary (Al-Kiraaza bil Ingil), and the Message Church of Holland (Ar-Risaala).
There are also followers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and Mormons (who meet in private homes).

Shia Muslims constituting less than 1 percent of the population are killed. Shiite leaders blame the lynchings on the government. There are also small groups of Quranists and Ahmadi Muslims. The once numerous Jewish community numbers fewer than 70 persons, mostly senior citizens. There are 1,000 to 1,500 Jehovah’s Witnesses and 1,500 to 2,000 Bahais; however, the government does not recognize these groups.
The US State Department says:

The government interprets Sharia as forbidding Muslims from converting to another religion despite there being no statutory prohibitions on conversion. This policy, along with the refusal of local officials to recognize such conversions legally, constitutes a prohibition in practice.

The EU Neighbourhood policy is supposedly based, not on military assistance, but encouraging Human Rights and the Rule of Law. These, the EEAS officials say repeatedly, are the foundation of EU foreign policy. What are the facts?

The European Court of Auditors said in a recent report that the European Union has not taken effective action to ensure taxpayers money is used for the purpose it was so generously given by EU leaders. That is to support European values. It has tried to trace one billion euros of the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument, ENPI.  It failed. Taxpayers money is more likely to encourage the opposite goals. Egypt has no audit trail at all for some four billion euros.
The Court of Auditors blamed:

• Lack of budgetary transparency,
• an ineffective audit function and
• endemic corruption in Egypt.

It said there was little or no real dialogue on corruption, Human Rights, torture and persecution. The main worries of the population were simply not addressed.

Large sections of Egyptian society expressed strong concerns about what they perceived to be a shift towards Sharia law, restrictions on both the freedom of expression and women’s and minorities’ rights, and the continued privileged role of the military.

The accountants saw the problems. The politicians shut their eyes. Conditions were not imposed. The EEAS and Commission talked about ‘deep democracy’ without seemingly being able to define it in relation to Sharia law. The EEAS/Commission still talks about the Arab Spring without seemingly taking into account that many suffering people consider it to be a winter.  The Auditors’ report said:

(a) the rights of minorities: sectarian violence has been increasing with Christians suffering the brunt of the violence.
Investigations into the violence have been sluggish or non-existent.
(b)  the rights of women: while this was an area where some advances were made over the last decade of the Mubarak regime, this progress is at risk since the uprising.

The Court report concluded:

Overall the EEAS and Commission have not been able to effectively manage EU  support to improve governance in Egypt.

If you pour money without accountancy controls into an already corrupt society you will encourage corruption. Most of EU’s money goes straight into the black hole of the national budget and is untraceable. Is that what Europe’s poor who also contribute to this export largesse of EU politicians expect?

The first responsibility of EU leaders dealing with taxpayers’ money is to ask the taxpayers what they wish to do with the money the leaders have collected. Secondly set up systems that have adequate controls to analyze whether the funds are properly spent and thirdly have a thorough review of the spending programmes to ensure they are effective and the productive of tolerance, democracy, justice and the rule of law.

Has pouring money into Egypt made the Egyptian politicians more sympathetic to the EU? The answer is the opposite. Many Islamists believe that if the West gives money to  a Muslim State, then it is in fulfillment of Koranic obligation of the non-believer or dhimmi. A dhimmi is a second class citizen, someone who refuses to adhere to Islam in a Sharia law based State. He has to pay a tax, usually onerous, called jizya (or jizia). It is not uncommon for clerics to say that US or European aid is confirmation of their down-trodden status as dhimmis and the aid is jizia.

Such religious questions and ideologies should be a core policy debate for the External Action Service. European experience shows that tolerance can be reinforced by non-financial aid such as advice about building a democratic governance system or ensuring joint ventures — like the European Coal and Steel Community — are undertaken. EU-Egyptian partnerships should be unambiguously based on openness, ethics and good accounting.  Law-based Convention of Human Rights including freedom of expression will also help fight ignorance in open debate.

The EEAS says that Human Rights are the basis for its policy. It should ensure that all aids conforms to the Strasbourg Convention and not the Sharia-based monstrosity of the Cairo Declaration that gives undefined human rights and powers only to those who submit to Islam and denies it to others including sectarians. Hiraba or local ‘justice’ involves violent lynchings of people, amputations and crucifixions for those just suspected of crime, theft or robbery.

Why is the EEAS not leading a debate about values across the Mediterranean? What about lynch mob justice in Egypt? What is its view of Sharia law and Hiraba (WARNING graphic images)?
 And why has the EEAS not even got an analysis for European citizens, the taxpayers, of Sharia law and its implications for Egypt and for Europe? According to a UN report, 99.3% of Egyptian women — yes 99.3 % — say they have experienced sexual harassment with sixty percent saying they have been touched inappropriately.

The European Commission declared 2013 to be the year of the Citizen. Does this stop at the confines of the Berlaymont? Or should it include the treatment of women and the concept of dhimmis?

What sort of monitoring does the EEAS have of Egyptian, North African  media? Much of this is available in Arabic on YouTube but is immediately dropped off YouTube when translated into English.  Policy for EU citizens cannot be founded on complacent illusions of an ignorant leadership.

Do policy makers deal with reality? Many other Muslim leaders in their various parties such as Morsi’s Freedom and Justice party, the Nour party, the Reform and Development Party, the Islamic Labour Party and Muslim Brotherhood consider the West as main enemies.

How can we be sure? President Morsi presided a meeting of the leaders of these parties and scholars of Egypt’s main university Al Azhar. They thought the meeting was secret. Their views were open, frank and ignorant. They all seemed to agree that USA and Israel (the only democratic State in the region) were their main enemies in the world. Was Europe included as Egypt’s enemy? Maybe. Perhaps like some Egyptians they all think that Europe will become Islamic in ten years time. Others spout plans for the reconquest of Europe.

What plans does the EEAS have that Egypt will be fully democratic in ten years time? Does it explain to Egyptians how Europe created peace and prosperity after two thousand years of constant warfare?

The secret meeting that was broadcast on Channel 1 TV was about the dispute with Ethiopia over the Nile Waters agreement. The scholar from Al Azhar university maintained that America and Israel must be behind Ethiopian desire for water and power.  He said that Ethiopians are diverting Nile water to Israel –  by a pipeline more than a thousand kilometers under the Red Sea. However Israel is quite capable of producing vast amounts of water by its present desalination plants. It has no use for such a stupid, vulnerable, costly and totally unrealistic, crazy idea. A look at the map and a superficial understanding of the hydrology of the Nile and its two sources, the Blue Nile in Ethiopia and the White Nile in the Great Lakes, would have shown anyone how ridiculous the idea was.

Yet without a free society and open debate,  even Egyptian leaders see plots everywhere while they refuse to deal with peace and justice at home or abroad. They wanted to either destroy the Ethiopian dam, form anti-Ethiopian regional alliances, intervene internal Ethiopian politics or subvert it by disinformation.

Such international problems need to be resolved democratically. Water agreements require implementation in peace with peaceful revisions where necessary. In the absence of a supervisory power such as the British had in 1923, that requires a common legal basis.

Any regional sharing of water must be based on similar principles of honesty and human rights that lay at the base of Europe’s Coal and Steel Community. That is why a Strasbourg style Convention of Human Rights  is necessary for all the Mediterranean and such regional agreements as the Nile basin.

This law-based Convention of Human Rights including freedom of expression will also help fight ignorance in open debate.

Thanks go to MEMRI, Middle East Media Research Institute, a private organisation, and others which have translated this information from Arabic. They should get financial support and help from the EEAS. Public awareness of where their tax money is going requires adequate translation at least into English for a proper dialogue of values.

Debate20: Desperately seeking Dishonest or Illiterate Citizens for Commission Jobs

All normal, honest citizens who can read and follow the treaty laws should be excluded from future EU Commissions. That, in effect, is what the present Commission-politicians have recommended. All those high-paid Commission posts will be reserved for political friends, they say. Only Top Citizens (members of their parties) can become Commissioners. It is completely contrary to the letter and spirit of the Community Method.

How should the Commission be elected honestly and openly from the treaties? Europe's founding Charter of 1951 requires the free assent of Citizens. The principles are clear and were published in an open letter to all Member State Delegations and Commissioners in 2008.

Ironically this present outrageous proposal comes in the year that the politician-Commissioners self-proclaimed as the Year of the Citizen. That is typical of what Robert Schuman called a political counterfeit. Isn't every year the Year of the Citizen? And how can anyone proclaim that this year, 2013, is the Year of the Citizen before he or she has asked all the citizens?

When President Nixon and Henry Kissinger announced the Year of Europe for 1973, European politicians reacted with fury and disgust, asking 'Why are we being treated like children? Isn't Europe important enough to be considered priority every year?' It opened up a year of discord and then, exploitation in a Mid-East war, from which Europe has not yet recovered or drawn the lessons. It is a dangerous matter to proclaim a Year of the Citizen -- while at the same time stealthily withdrawing and stealing the rights of Citizens!

The action of the politicians today parallels the deceit of the Communist regimes that Schuman called 'hypocritical'. They called their Soviet-controlled regimes People's Democracies. In reality they were controlled by a similar party political Cartel. It was called a Politburo. Politicians now want to subvert the 'independent' and 'impartial' Commission into a Politburo, contrary to law, morality, historical experience and logic. The Community is based on universal or supranational values. They expose purloined political superiority of the party representative over the Citizen.

The Commission was set up to be the honest broker for Europeans, not a political secretariat. A special problem rises with the latest bit of antidemocratic fraud. The future Top Citizens to be parachuted into the Commission have to be extra-special.

• They have to declare that they will be dishonest or
• They have to maintain that they cannot read the Treaties which give the the job description and qualifications for Commissioners.
• They can say they are 'mentally challenged when it comes to law'.
• Failing that, they can use the old fall-back, 'I am only obeying orders,' when they are chosen by political party machines thinly disguised as governments of nations.

The present Top Citizens of the Commission are all parachuted in from the three major political party families. No one elected them. They want to retain political parachuting as voter confidence drops continuously. Even taking into account the burgeoning protest parties, more electors refuse to vote than vote for what they see as an increasingly corrupt system.

The present Commission were not even properly and legally chosen by the member governments acting for their nations. How is this clear? Because the governments -- all of them -- failed to advertise for the best candidate across their populations. Instead they chose a close political friend, or someone they owed a favour to, or even a disgraced politician or political enemy in their party they wanted to send far away to Brussels. In short all 'governments' chose a politician -- not as the treaties make clear, an experienced, independent, honest citizen from any profession, including a scientist, a lawyer, an engineer, a diplomat, an academic, an ex-entrepreneur or ex-trade-unionist.

The present Commissioners are acting in a cartel as Europe's unelected, unrepresentative and highly partisan Politburo. The Commissioners are supposed and required by law to be INDEPENDENT and take no instructions from national governments or parties. Yet 27 Commissioners sit in Brussels, each one selected by their Member State government.

That turns Europe into secretive internationalism, not democracy. They are supposed to be few in number and European, yet there is exactly one Commissioner per nominating government! This overstaffing was 'temporarily' introduced by the closed-door European Council in order to pressure the second Irish referendum to agree to the Lisbon Treaty.

The Community Method requires that the Commission is to be impartial and the opposite of a partisan. The Community Method requires open government and open procedures. Only if Commissioners are really impartial as just judges in a court of law can the citizen hope that a fair and just policy be agreed by enterprises, workers, consumers, individuals and nations.

Now the Commission-Politburo are asking all future candidates to ignore any Treaty articles dating back to the Community's foundation up to and including the politicians' own Lisbon Treaty. For instance Article 10 TEU says:

10 para 3. Every citizen shall have the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union. Decisions shall be taken as openly and as closely as possible to the citizen.

No more! From now on these politicians want the Commission to be exclusively controlled by the party cartel. They 'recommend' only party politicians can fill these posts -- for ever. Whoever asked them? The posts are open to all Citizens. That is the law. To act otherwise is outside the legal power of the politicians.

There is absolutely no article in the Treaties that says that the Commission posts are reserved for politicians. Nothing. Some articles are misinterpreted by politicians to try to say that politicians have powers to become Commissioners. A closer examination of these shows that in fact they say the opposite.

No politician is a super-citizen. The party cartel are therefore urgently seeking dishonest citizens or those who cannot read such articles and know nothing about the Community Method to pose their candidatures for the post of Commission President or Commissioners. The fallacies in the politicians' arguments and the illegality of their 'recommendation' will be examined in coming commentaries in this debate.  

Elysée2: Horsemeat fraud and de Gaulle's cuckoo

Do you have control to what politicians put in your mouth? Some 70,000 horses disappeared in Northern Ireland alone to the apparent consternation of authorities. They may have ended up in your lunch as Horse Lasagna.  What mischief happens in the UK, Romania, France, a dozen other countries and all the many labeling stations in-between has yet to be revealed.  Quantities of horse inflammatory medicine, bute, (phenylbutazone) have been detected. Bute can be harmful to humans. Other horsemeat forbidden for sale in America and thus exported to Canada is re-exported to Belgium and who knows where else in the Single Market. In this fantasy land across all of Europe from east to west, horse and pig and maybe chicken feathers and unspeakable additions, become ‘beef.

All this anti-democratic practice arose because of a simple fact. Europe lacks a democratic Community Agricultural Policy. It has never had one. Instead it has a policy still defined by anti-Community nationalist principles dating back to General de Gaulle in the 1960s. What we have today is in flagrant violation to the European Economic Community treaty. It is illegal. The treaties say that the consumer should be fully part of all agricultural decisions. Instead the consumer was cut out of decision-making – right from the beginning.

The European Commission now says that the public should be calm because all the meat constituents can be proved by its paperwork! The old-fashioned system where inspectors or meat workers could easily detect horse meat has been rendered null because frozen meat is directly mixed in vats. Previously any worker could distinguish the smell of horse from beef and they applied simple tests. Even test borings of frozen meat are no longer taken. Paper is king! Big mistake.

The Commission maintains all frauds could be detected and corrected by traceability certificates. Not true. Traceability investigations as food crosses five or six borders have been thrown into confusion when it was revealed that microchip animal identifiers can be bought on the internet for a few cents and veterinary documents are easily falsified with cheap stationery stamps.

The horsemeat fraud is a latest scandal in a whole cascade or historical pageant of multi-million euro rackets arising inside the EU agricultural system. At the core of the matter was de Gaulle's cuckoo egg. Under de Gaulle the whole of the Community system was distorted so that German industrialists were only allowed a single market for their products (many outclassing the French) if they subsidized French farmers (and Gaullist voters). This is far from the Community method where all States are equal and overall consumer interests are sought.

The total Community budget was soon bloated with agricultural spending taking the major part. This political fraud led to the Milk and Wine Lakes, where politicians milked the European taxpayer’s money for massive over-production to subsidize votes among the farming community. That was joined by the Meat Mountain scandal and the Butter Berg scandals (where further export subsidies provided cheap butter for the Soviet Union during the Cold War!). These rackets all had the same fingerprints  -- politicians committing fraud and abusing taxpayers as the helpless stooges.

Expect more scandals to come. The more agricultural products move from country to country before it reaches your mouth, the more you can expect that olive oil, orange juice and your shopping list of food and drink is adulterated by inferior and often dangerous mixtures.

Who is to blame? Who started it? Where the Founding Fathers of Europe responsible for this? Did they badly design the Common Agriculture Policy?

The answer is No. The first proposal for a supranational Agricultural Community, was presented by Pierre Pflimlin and Robert Schuman after widespread discussions in the Council of Europe, Europe’s great laboratory of ideas on integration. It aimed to bring in as much as possible the United Kingdom, and countries as geographically diverse as Greece and Turkey, Portugal, Switzerland, Norway and Turkey. For the UK and the Commonwealth and others the option of association was muted. Called after name of the French MRP politician the Charpentier Plan was passed by the Assembly of the Council of Europe. In the 30 November 1951 debate he said it was aimed ‘serving the best interests of farmers and consumers alike.’

Note it had nothing to do with gaining party political votes. It was aimed at balancing agricultural production and consumption with the help of a High Authority (or European Commission) thus removing surpluses or deficits and providing for public supported procedures for stocks, imports and exports by the fair means of the democratic assembly, an executive committee, a council of ministers and a court of justice.

These ideas met with British opposition and in France Communist and Gaullist hostility. A more restricted conception was implemented later in the Rome Treaties in 1957. The principles remained the same: a balance between farmers, farm workers and consumers on a pan-European scale.
The European Economic Community treaty  signed in Rome in 1957 has a whole chapter on the Agricultural Community. It provided for full democratic control of prices and supplies for the benefit of three categories:

• farmers,
• workers and
• consumers.

They were never implemented!

By 1958 the Gaullists were in power in France. It was this generation that did not set up the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) according to the treaties. This generation also distorted and manipulated the policy to feed their party political machines. The consumer suffered. The consumer paid.

The Treaties of Rome provide for safeguards to ensure low prices and high quality. If the Community organization had been implemented as described in the treaties there would never have been horse-meat frauds. There would never have been

• Wine Lakes,
• Milk Lakes,
• Meat Mountains
• Butter Bergs
• Or subsidized sales of what Europeans saw as useless surpluses to the USSR,
• The EU would not have dumped agricultural surpluses on developing countries;
• nor would it have blocked developing countries from importing their foods into the EU allowing poor farmers there to gain a decent living from the land.

De Gaulle’s confidant and Minister of Information, Alain Peyrefitte later revealed how the de Gaulle saw the Community system as a political milch-cow and  sabotaged all democratic development.

De Gaulle rejected supranationality or European democracy as dangerous and totally opposed to his policy to dominate Europe.

‘That’s what we don’t want! That won’t do. That would be gross stupidity. Of the two treaties of Rome, I do not know which of them is the most dangerous! The Treaty on Euratom is worse that useless. — It is pernicious. I ask myself if we should not denounce it openly. And then there is the Common Market. It is a customs union, which can help us, provided that we realize a common agricultural policy, which is not instituted there, and several other common policies, which are not even mentioned,' he told Perefitte.

Did de Gaulle want a fully European Community Agriculture policy? Not at all. He wanted a French-centered agricultural policy, paid for by Europeans. He blocked any real Community policy. He had no motivation to treat other States as equals.

The treaty of Rome article 40 calls for something quite different from what de Gaulle delivered:
a. common rules for competition;
b. compulsory coordination of various national markets organizations;
c. a European Market Organization.

What was the purpose of this European Market Organisation? Article 39 spells out five objectives:

1. increase in productivity
2. ensure fair standard of living for agricultural workers;
3. stabilize markets;
4. assure availability of supplies
5. ensure that supplies reach consumers at reasonable prices.

Note that consumers are a key part of the arrangement. Consumers are major co-decision-makers in the Treaties of Rome and of Paris. Yet politicians wrote out consumers of the agricultural arrangements, even though it is specifically written in treaty law.

For more than half a century the politicians have refused to put the consumer in a position to oppose their misappropriation of Community resources for voting purposes. That, in spite of the fact that the same articles about a European Market Organisation and other stipulations are repeated more or less word for word in the Lisbon Treaty!

This European Market Organization is at the center of all agricultural and food policy with the Economic and Social Committee giving overall guidance. The latter has never been properly elected as, again, de Gaulle blocked it as well as elections to the European Parliament.
The guiding Agricultural Market Organisation is to be composed of Producers, Workers and Consumers. In the 1960s there were many lobbyists rooting for farming interests. They even brought a cow into the Council of Ministers meeting! They rioted in the streets. They set off fire-crackers and waved flags and banners. Above all they threatened politicians with voting against them.

There were however no equivalent consumer organizations. So politicians ignored them. No consumers were asked about their opinions, nor did they activate the Economic and Social Committee to act on their behalf, because it was already hamstrung by politicians' refusal to treat it seriously as a sovereign body.

What was instituted was a perverse system – the mother and father of what is now called comitology.

Politicians created secret committees away from the press and public that would advise them on package deals. Diplomats were told to work out the best national deals to appease the agricultural lobbyists and let the European consumer go hang!

Instead of consumer rights being considered, the French strong-armed the others. They retaliated in similar measure. The French even threatened to withdraw from the Community in 1964 if they did not get their own way with Germany paying to support its cereal prices. (See the Common Agricultural Policy, Robert Akrill, p34).

The Commission proposed that the cereal and other prices should be subsidized from the Community budget via the TEMPORARY agency of the European Agricultural Guarantee and Guidance Fund, the FEOGA, Fonds Européen d’Orientation et de Garantie Agricole. Compared to how it was used, it is misnamed. It became a permanent subsidy, nothing to do with stabilized markets, competition, quality food and the benefit of consumers or in fact farmers. It became the cuckoo that soon took over TWO-THIRDS of the EU budget in 1988.

The ministers in Council, dominated by the French, surrounded themselves with their own closed-doors committees of their so-called experts. Absent was the main thrust of taxpayers – the consumers. Package deals were cut in secret and are still being made on the basis of power politics, not consumer interests of all European citizens.

Imagine what would have happened if the ministers and self-seeking politicians had followed the law of the treaties instead of distorting and blocking the treaty.

The consumers would have spoken out at the monstrous mountains and lakes frauds. Instead they had no voice. They would have not allowed their money to be wasted on such subsidies. Instead they would have pointed to the countries around the world that were far more efficient and provided top quality agriculture without subsidy.   Two effects would be apparent:

• Stopping unnecessary waste, counterproductive subsidies,
• Raising the efficiency of farms and productivity of farm workers to the benefit of consumers with lower prices and higher quality products.

The Franco-German governmental control of agricultural markets was shamelessly made apparent on the accession of the new Member States of Central and Eastern Europe. They were treated not as second class citizens but third class. They were refused equal treatment. There was no real rethinking of agricultural policy based on Community lines. Instead millions of farmers which had supplied food across eastern Europe and for other  markets were thrown out of work.

The consumer is left asking:
When are European leaders going to obey the treaties and bring in an empowered European Market Organisation to control and guide consumer interests for affordable, healthy and high-quality food?

Elysée1: Germans! French People! Are you still being fooled by de Gaulle?

Can you discern political propaganda and deceit? Do you know what real European democracy is? Today the French and Germans are spending a great deal of taxpayers’ money on celebrating 50 years of the January 1963  Elysée Treaty. They are being told it is the motor of Europe.

Rubbish!

It isn’t and never was. It was designed as a means to stifle European democracy by giving de Gaulle power over German resources. It was designed to control Germany, to mobilize the populations including the youth to support the Gaullist government and grant de Gaulle non-democratic powers. De Gaulle closed down all European democratic institutions. His plan was to destroy them if possible.

That is far from a Community approach. De Gaulle treated all the other Community States, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Italy as children. Above all he wanted to harness Germany and its economic power. He feared democracy especially European democracy or supranationality.

He told his Minister of Information Alain Peyrefitte:  ‘supranational integration is going to allow the Germans to teach the French organisation and discipline. All that is monstrous! Monstrous!’

Is the Elysée Treaty the centre of European action? Did European reconciliation start with de Gaulle’s action? No. European reconciliation clearly started when Germany was allowed to enter the Council of Europe as a normal member and become an active member of the European Community in 1950.

Germany got equality from these institutions that Schuman and the Founding Fathers of Europe created. From the Elysée Treaty Germany gave its acquiescence to pay for Milk Lakes, Butter Bergs and Meat Mountains to support the French farmers’ votes for de Gaulle.

Was Adenauer fooled by the Elysée treaty subterfuge? No, he was not. But he went along with it because he needed de Gaulle’s support for his pro-western policy. De Gaulle had the key levers: the veto to make sure that any democratic State would not enter the European Community. Thus Norway, Denmark, UK and other countries were refused and Germany had to deal subserviently with France as the main power-broker. All democratic institutions of the Community such as the Parliament, the Consultative Committees were frozen or to use de Gaulle’s word ‘chloroformed’.

Did the Elysée Treaty bring Franco-German reconciliation? As Adenauer acknowledged, Franco-German reconciliation was accomplished more than decade before de Gaulle by Robert Schuman.

He wrote in September 1962:

Dear Mr Schuman,
During the visit of General de Gaulle last week, I often thought of you as the man who by his initiative of the Coal and Steel Community, laid the real foundations of the friendship which at present unites our two countries. It is with gratitude that I always think of our joint work. I would dearly like to express to you, especially in the present circumstances, my appreciation.  It would be a great joy for me if it were possible for us to meet again. Rochefort: Robert Schuman, p359.

Europeans – including both French and Germans should be highly suspicious when governments spend such money on political folderol and ignore historical facts – such as the sixtieth anniversary of the EU institutions. The real celebrations of reconciliation, European integration and democracy never took place last year.

Just ask the politicians who are busy spending French and German tax money:

Who was the first President of the European Community’s Council of Ministers?

Do they know? It was Konrad Adenauer who presided over the first Council of Ministers on 8 September 1952. France sat at the table while Adenauer, the German Chancellor, banged the gavel!
Adenauer had no need to celebrate reconciliation more than a decade later. The treaty only marks the fact that de Gaulle had to recognize the European Community as a fact that he could not destroy. It is a celebration hiding the change of policy of de Gaulle. It has nothing to do with real European reconciliation.

Before 1950 de Gaulle wanted to seize German territory such as the French occupation zone and the Saar, carve out the industrial Ruhr and draw new French borders on the Rhine. He denounced Bonn democracy and the Federal Republic of Germany as 'the Fourth Reich'.

That this Elysée Treaty celebration is political fraud on a large scale is clear from other facts of history. The Founding Fathers of the European Community also made this clear. Europe was to be based on solidarity of common objectives with the diversity of resources and the equality of States. Socialists and Christian Democrats in France and Germany opposed the treaty. The Community precludes a Gaullist-style Directoire or a secretive tête-à-tête or Franco-German axis.

This present exercise is a highly suspicious political Public Relations operation, especially given the almost total silence about the celebration of the SIXTIETH anniversary of the beginning of the Democratic institutions of the first European Community in 2012.

De Gaulle was also petty and vindictive. He forbade Adenauer from attending the funeral of Robert Schuman in Metz 1963. Adenauer had already agreed to come. Jean Monnet was also not invited to Metz. Six former prime ministers of France refused to attend in protest at the Gaullist action. Neither de Gaulle’s prime minister nor his minister of foreign affairs attended the funeral. RTF, the Gaullist controlled radio and television, hardly mentioned the event. (see Rochefort: Robert Schuman, p362.)

Is de Gaulle’s dictatorship, as François Mitterrand called it in 1964, the sort of event that real Europeans want to celebrate?

SECS3: Why your 2002 Euro is now worth 25 cents: the Commission

Europe’s political leaders have debauched your money. Imagine that in 2002 instead of exchanging your national currency into euros you bought gold. Today that gold would buy four times the number of euros. The same goes for oil. If you had bought silver, you'd have even more euros, wheat a bit less. Globally the euro is massively debased.

All along  history, politicians have debased currencies and spent more money than treasuries receive in taxes. Money is supposed to be a store of value. All pensions and investment require that what is saved should not be eaten away by government action. Politicians say they need inflation. That is theft from citizens. A globally-traded Community currency must be able to retain long-term, world value in spite of politicians.

A solid supranational currency cannot be constructed without a fully independent European Commission. The reason involves European ministers who were the first to legally debase the Euro currency. They even broke the inadequate rules in the Stability and Growth Pact. France and Germany then disobeyed European Court judgements. Yet they expect citizens to obey the Court.

The Commission brought this case before the Court. That is probably why the politicians make extra efforts to control it. They have now tried to turn the Commission into an exclusive club for politicians. Previously and according to all the treaties, no politician with a party card should hold the office of Commissioner.

Now politicians want a complete take-over of the Commission. Making it a joint secretariat for European parties would stop it embarrassing governments as lawbreakers in Court. Politicians have created their own complex rules to replace Court action. They want the freedom to debase the currency the way they choose, without Court judgements if possible.

Now composed almost entirely of card-carrying politicians, the Commission has tried to make its own internal rules to ‘permit’ political entryism. They are hardly valid. The treaties are the only legal touchstone that matters. The conduct of national politicians who parachuted their card-carrying friends into the Commission is self-condemnatory.

The citizens of Europe are perfectly able to see this misconduct for what it is. Flagrant violations seem not to deter politicians. Politicians seem addicted to party political nepotism. Normal citizens are despised as second class. The honest citizen scrupulously following treaty law who abandons compromising interests to become a Commission candidate is excluded by the political rascals who don’t.

What has happened is ILLEGAL. The Commission and its President are not reserved posts for party political fodder. It is not a political retirement home.

It is illegal for any politician under all treaties since 1951 including the politicians’ own treaty, that of Lisbon. At best only EX-politicians are allowed. The same applies to others:  EX-businesspeople, EX-trade-unionists, EX-professionals or EX-workers of any stripe. He or she has to resign previous functions.

Today we have three treaties governing the European Union. The Treaty on European Union, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union of Lisbon (these two replacing what was previously called the Customs Union, the European Economic Community or the Common Market) and the other treaty of Rome, Euratom, (also called European Atomic Energy Community treaty).

All of them state the same thing, that the Commission must be independent. No article of any treaty says that the Commission must be composed of politicians or national representatives of Member States.

They say the reverse. Anyone having membership of a political party must resign it. No one must take any instruction from a Member State government or any one else. TEU Article 17 says Commission members must be chosen on the ground of

‘their general competence and European commitment from persons whose independence is beyond doubt.‘

In any court of law it would be clear that if someone signs up to an ideological programme of a political party expressing different interests of lobby groups, then the Commissioner’s independence is more than in doubt. Any businessperson who on becoming Commissioner retained his business or other interests would also be guilty of double standards. Proof of guilt is furnished by party membership cards. The holders are not independent. Attendance at party meetings and participation in party organization is further condemnatory evidence.

The Lisbon treaty says that the Commission shall be chosen after parliamentary elections. Nowhere does it say that a politician involved in the elections should be made Commission President. Article 17 TEU rules it out. It specifies that the Commission must conform to its paragraph 3 and 5 restricting it to persons

‘whose independence is beyond doubt’ and who would ‘not take instructions from any government, or other institution, body, office or entity’. The person must ‘refrain from any action incompatible with their duties.’

That excludes an MEP or party leader whose ideological prejudices are amply proven by the parliamentary election. Nor should Commissioners be composed of national representatives. The Euratom Community commenced with FIVE Commissioners.

No professional activity other than Commissioner duty is allowed, whether paid or not. Lisbon’s Article 245 of the FEU reflects the supranational democracy of the 1951 Treaty of  Paris article 9. All other treaties have confirmed the independence criterion to this day.

Members of the Commission may not, during their term of office, engage in any other occupation, whether gainful or not.

Thus the Community system requires Commissioners to abstain from political parties or any other body whether ‘gainful or not.’

The first impartially chosen Commission was empowered to nominate some of its own members (article 10, Paris). All should have the impartiality of judges in Court and need to resign from bodies that might influence their judgement. Thus any citizen who has independence, experience, the public trust for seeking the European public good and honesty should be eligible.

Choosing Commissioners exclusively from those with party membership cards (2% of the population) is an offensive discriminatory act redolent of Nazism or Communism. It violates the human rights of 98 percent of citizens who are not party members. The majority of the European population refuses to vote in EP elections because of such flagrant abuse.

Sound European money and public confidence starts with the independence of its institutions.

SECS2: Citizens, demand your Euro rights! Top Citizens declare 2013 the Year of the Citizen!

Celebrate! Rejoice! This year 2013 is the Year of European citizens! Europe’s Politburo, its Top Citizens, has declared it to be so, without asking anyone. Did you agree to it or even know about its multimillion euro budget?

Yet hypocritically the politicians have not allowed citizens their rights for more than 60 years. Take the Euro as an example. It is a system devised by incompetent politicians (or ignorant of Community democracy), run by incompetent politicians to the advantage of politicians. Surely citizenship means more than European passports — that is changing the colour and size of national passports.

Europe’s citizens have still no means to control the politicians, nor how they raise taxes and spend them. Most citizens therefore refuse to vote. The citizens have no say in the extraordinary number of treaties, compacts, Stability Funds and Tax Haven companies cooked up by and for politicians in the margins of the Community and too often totally outside it and in flagrant contradiction with Community and democratic principles.

If anyone should consider the word ‘hypocritical’ too strong, remember the Year of the Citizen celebrates the twenty years of the Maastricht Treaty. That ‘EU’ system precipitated a major rejection of Community principles. Democracy.

In its 1992 referendum Denmark with a turnout of 83 % said No to Maastricht. Again the Top Citizens moved in and told them that this was not acceptable. The Danes were told to vote again in 1993. Robert Schuman himself warned about such political counterfeiters. These political counterfeiters are now involved in counterfeit currency. The Gaullists declared names of recipients of the CAP ‘top secret’. Now all currency deals are done in the dead of night behind closed doors. We have secret companies in Luxembourg, declaring themselves above the law.

The Politburo who decided to celebrate this year of citizens for Europe’s 500 million citizens also decided in 2012 that they would not celebrate the sixty years of the Community institutions, Commission, Council, Parliament.  The year 2012 was a NON Year. It took the Nobel Prize Committee to remind the Presidents of these institutions who eagerly took the prize in Oslo that 2012 should have been a major anniversary.

The European Founding Fathers set out the preconditions for a Community currency. This requires democratic legitimacy, not technocratic centralism. It should not be run by politicians. It requires a democratic means to root out political and statistical corruption.

Warnings were studiously ignored in the 1990s when the Euro was created.
Firstly, the political leaders — encouraged by de Gaulle’s ideas — have blocked the articles of the treaties and the Great Charter of 1951 (see http://www.schuman.info ). The Gaullist system ignored European citizens. Instead it made them pay for the Wine Lakes and the Meat Mountain scandals to buy farmer votes in France and elsewhere.

Secondly the post-Gaullist politicians decided to retain closed door Councils and the package deal system. It shut out all citizens from seeing or hearing about how European tax was being shared out among national politicians for their own pet projects. It rejected any elections to Community bodies — until the Court of Justice ruled they were acting illegally. The European parliamentary elections have NEVER been conducted according to Treaty specifications. The EP holds 27 national elections. They always favour of the national government politicians. That is a cheat.

Thirdly we now have the monetary equivalent of the Gaullist Wine Lake system. This time it is currency liquidity. The European Politburo is using THEIR Euro to paper over the cracks of the national currency abuses. This Euro was not originally designed for the corruptions of Greece, Spain and Portugal but for the corrupt practice in Italy, France and Germany.

The Gaullist Franco-German Axis powers were among the first to thumb their noses at the Growth and Stability Pact and ignore the judgements of the European Court of Justice when exposed.

How should a European Supranational Economic and Currency System be structured? The Founding Fathers insisted on democratic control for any currency — because it had to have:

• the people’s support in its creation;
• the democratic means to correct any systemic imperfections for countries, regions, businesses, workers and consumers, for tax systems and for migration policies;
• the powers to innovate fully across the Community and to consider global responsibilities;
• the powers to supervise what politicians might do;
• the means to root out corrupt practice.

The Founding Fathers insisted that democratic institutions must be developed BEFORE the supranational currency was launched. These included a single Europe-wide election for the Parliament and elections for organized civil society in the three consultative committees.

For example the Economic and Social Committee should have elected representatives from European Business, Workers and Consumers associations. They should not be chosen from national groups at the whim of politicians for political favours back home. A really European Consultative Committee would supervise any plans for a currency. They would use their powers given them in the legislative process.

A properly elected Committee of Regions would supervise and actively be part of legislation about regional and national disparities and unemployment, as well as migrations issues. These bodies are still the play things of politicians, whether national or European. They are not independent bodies.

Instead the euro has been foisted on the public without the necessary democratic development repeated in all the treaties from that of Paris to Lisbon. Who created the euro? Politicians! But as any student of monetary economics knows the management of the money system should be run by an independent institution, supervised by another independent body, and should NEVER be put in the hands of politicians especially those who have shown themselves unable to balance their own budget or run the economy according to the rules.