The Parthian peace process and the birth of Jesus

Is there any event equivalent in history to Europe’s extraordinary peace record? Europe is living in the longest peace in its known history. That peace was based on supranational principles and initiated by Robert Schuman after a lifetime’s work.
An amazing peace process took place two thousand years ago between two fighting superpowers. They divided the planet as much as the Soviet Union and the USA did in recent times. And it covered the exact area that is the source of today’s conflict in the Near and Middle East — Syria, Iraq and Iran.
In the middle of the earth at the point of contact of these two superpowers lay Israel. It was conquered first by one power, the Roman Empire and then by the other, the Parthian Empire. Who won? Rome was humiliated. Its armies were decimated. It renounced any further attacks on the superpower of the East.
Then a peace treaty was forged. At this time and because of this peace, trade was boosted from the Far East to Gaul in the West. An era of prosperity allowed the Temple at Jerusalem to be rebuilt.

During this Augustan-Parthian peace, Jesus Christ was born at Bethlehem. Why have most Europeans not learned the facts behind this key event in Christian civilization? What did most people learn about the Parthian Empire at school or even university?
Yet every year many people send each other cards with Parthians on them. Who are they? The Magi! Why does the real identity of the Magi remain obscure to most people?


Early in the Middle Ages great confusion, not to say false propaganda, arose about the supposed three Magi who visited the infant Jesus in Bethlehem. First, it is important to go to the record itself in the New Testament (NT) and get the facts.
* There were not three Magi. The number is not specified. It is only stated that they brought three types of gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh.
* The Magi came from the East. No names are mentioned.
* The event took place more than a year after the birth of Jesus as he is called a ‘toddler’ in Greek. That means he was about a year and a half old.
* No other children are mentioned which means that James, the brother of Jesus, was probably not yet born.
* The visit took place in Bethlehem. When Jesus was born, the David’s ancestral home no longer existed. Why? Because Herod the Great had destroyed all trace of the Davidic dynasty and the ‘castle’ of David there. James says in Acts 15, that the ‘Tabernacle of David had fallen down’. Herod did not hesitate to kill off his own sons and wives if he thought they would usurp him. It is therefore certain that he would wipe out any trace of a Davidic dynasty he could find.
The NT says that at the time of the Magi’s visit Joseph had a house there. How come? Joseph was of direct royal lineage. He had the temerity and obligation to register the lands of David as his own. The registration took place as the first one under Quirinus, governor of Syria. (He made two.) This coincided with the celebration of twenty-five years of Augustus’s reign and the 750th anniversary of the foundation of the city of Rome. (See Dr Ernest L Martin: The Star that astonished the World).
Augustus was proclaimed Pater Patriae, Father of the Fatherland. Prominent citizens were required to register their smaller fatherlands and acclaim allegiance to Caesar. Thus Joseph registered his right under Roman and Israelite laws as patriarch of the tribe of Judah. This was a very dangerous move as his life was at immediate risk by Herod. But Joseph also had protection under Roman law. Herod could not simply kill a Davidic son without Roman acquiescence. As James said, the ruins were prophesied by Amos to be rebuilt.
So why in the Middle Ages did the Magi become a source of controversy? Firstly, the Magi were not Christian or even Jewish as far as the ignorant scholars of the time could say. People asked: why did pagans come and worship the infant Jesus? Why did they come at all? How many were there? Why didn’t Herod kill them?
The answers are clear once we understand the dilemma faced by the Roman State Church founded under Constantine in the 300s CE. Constantine’s amalgam of paganism and Christianity replaced Rome’s ancient pantheon. The Roman Empire had its capital in Constantinople, today’s Istanbul.
The lasting shame of the Roman Empire is that it destroyed the kingdom of Judah, its capital Jerusalem and its Temple. The term ‘Magi’ relates to the rival super power of Rome, the Parthian Empire. It extended from the River Euphrates to India and modern Afghanistan. Parthians traded with the Far East. It was a feudal confederation of kingdoms, not a military dictatorship like Rome.



The Head of the Parthian Empire was called Arsaces, ‘King of kings’. A single dynasty had a succession of 30 Arsakoi kings. They ruled from 255 BCE for nearly half a millennium, more than any dynasty there before or since. The kings were selected, elected and sometimes rejected by a Council of Wisemen, priestly scientists. Its name? The Magi! (See Rawlinson’s Parthia or Steven M Collins: Parthia, Forgotten Ancient Super-power.) Rawlinson says that Parthia divided ‘with Rome … the sovereignty of the earth.’
There is good reason why Europeans are so ignorant about Rome’s super-power rival. The Magi again! The paradox became an intense political problem for the Roman Empire of Constantinople. Why? Because, although the ruling Arsakoi tribes of the Parthian Empire had migrated by then, the Roman Empire was still at war with the successor Sassanian Persian Empire.
It was excruciatingly painful for the priests of the Roman ‘Mother Church’ to explain why the Magi of Persia had worshiped the infant Jesus and the Roman Empire had destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. Parthia worshiped Jesus. Rome pillaged Jerusalem and destroyed the Jews. How could Romans justify a Christian heritage?
The Roman Mother Church therefore blamed the Jews for the death of Jesus although the crucifixion was conducted by the Roman soldiers, under Roman imperial authority and with Roman nails.
As for the Magi, they became non-persons. They were reduced to just three foreigners. But in reality the Magi helped govern Parthia. They performed a similar task to the Levitical priesthood for the Israelitish kings.
Were there three Magi or more? We can say with near certainty that there were not three but many thousands! The Parthians were highly mobile and had several capitals. They traveled in massive, opulent, oriental style. The general selected by King Orodes to fight the Roman invader Crassus arrived with two hundred litters for his concubines. A thousand camels carried his personal baggage. A body of ten thousand horsemen and slaves served his personal needs. The Magi, the resplendently rich Parthian kingmakers, would have come to Jerusalem in their thousands or not at all!
This is how Matthew’s gospel describes the scene:
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judah in the days of Herod the king,
BEHOLD! There came wise men (Magi) from the East to Jerusalem, saying:
‘Where is he that is born King of the Jews? … We are come to do homage to him.
When Herod heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him.
The word ‘troubled’ can better be translated ‘terrified’, ‘set in a tumult’ ‘consternated’.
Parthia had forged a peace treaty with Rome two decades earlier. This came after Roman legions had been grossly humiliated. In 55 BCE the avaricious Consul Crassus sought booty. Crassus, he of the saying ‘as rich as Crassus,’ was the powerful oligarch of Rome. Parthian king Orodes slaughtered his 40,000 strong legions. Presented with his severed head during a performance of the Euripides play ‘Bacchae’, Orodes filled its mouth with molten gold, mocking him to drink to his fill. In 40 BCE Parthia invaded Judea and deposed the Roman-selected high priest at the Temple and installed another, Antigonus. In 37 BCE Mark Antony invaded Parthia with a massive 16 legions of 100,000 men. They were decimated. He barely escaped with his life. In 34 Julius Caesar planned to attack Parthia. He was assassinated in Rome.
If in the next few days you hear people talking about ‘Three wise men’, you can tell them, ‘It’s time to wise up on the Parthian Magi!’
Today’s leaders need to remind themselves how this area of an amazing peace, became again the furnace of conflict.

Germany2: Europe is still befuddled over German Unity and Russia

Compared with the hopes that blossomed in 1950 for a united Europe and the end of Soviet domination, today’s leaders seem to have lost the plot. The Schuman Declaration not only provided a way to resolve the danger of another war with Germany. It set out as path that would unite the Continent with a democratic Russia, when the time came.
Since the time de Gaulle seized power in France, even the pro-Europeans have been befuddled in a fog of corruption and false nationalism.
In 1989 leaders of the European Community were shocked and worried about what they considered the dangerous consequences of the fall of the Berlin Wall. German unity was inevitable.
Some tried to block it. Others warned of a German Reich. Germany had been at the origin of three wars in a century: the Franco-Prussian war and two World Wars. In October 1990, German leaders agreed to a 900-page treaty unifying the laws and politics, transport and with a single capital at Berlin. A national day of German Unity was declared for 3 October.
In the decades since the Berlin Wall fell, have politicians learned anything about the European Community? The Community was actually designed as the guarantee that Germany would not be able to go to war against its neighbours EVER again. That is what the founding fathers said.
Robert Schuman and others gave the highest profile speeches about it forty years previously. Why were these speeches not republished by the European institutions? Why were they not republished by the French, German and other Governments? Were the institutions asleep?
Let’s look at the speeches given by Robert Schuman in 1948 and 1949 to the United Nations General Assembly.
On 28 September 1948 — three short years after the massive destruction and hate of World War 2, Schuman told the UN General Assembly that the unification of Germany was inevitable and he, as Foreign Minister of France, was going to make sure that the unification of Europe was also inevitable because this was the guarantee that all could live in peace:
‘A renewed Germany will have to insert itself inside the democracy of Europe. The dismemberment of this old continent, so often and cruelly torn by war, is a relic of times past. … Now, however, our times are those of large economic units and great political alliances. Europe must unite to survive. France intends to work on this energetically with all its heart and soul. A European public opinion is already being created. Already concrete efforts are taking shape that are marking the first steps on a new road..
‘We are, of course, only at the start of what is a great work. … Let us hope, God willing, that those who are presently hesitating will not take too long to be convinced about it. An economic union implies political cooperation. The ideas of a federation and a confederation are being discussed. We are happy to see such concepts being taken up, and studied in numerous international meetings in which personalities most representative of European public opinion are participating. Now is the time for such ideas to be analysed and supported by the governments themselves. In agreement with the Belgian Government, the French Government has proposed to follow up suggestions to call a representative assembly of European public opinion with a view to prepare a project for organising Europe. This assembly will have to weigh all the difficulties and propose reasonable solutions which take into account of the need of a wise and progressive development’
The next year on 23 September, after he had laid the foundations of the Council of Europe, an institution that would guarantee Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms for all Europeans, Schuman reported to the UN General Assembly on progress in Germany and Europe:
‘The first President of the new Federal Republic has just been elected and the first Chancellor designated. The destiny of Germany is again conferred on the Germans themselves. Facts will show if they are in a position to face up to their responsibilities that are restored to them and to prepare their future in an orderly manner and in freedom. The rhythm of developments that follow will depend on the results of this experiment. Our hope is that Germany will commit itself on a road that will allow it to find again its place in the community of free nations, commencing with that European Community of which the Council of Europe is a herald.’
Europe’s peace would be based on a supranational democratic European Community, not a classical federation or a confederation. This was the year before the Schuman Declaration. This speech besides clarifying how Schuman was to guarantee a permanent European peace, also exposes the mistake or vain boast in Jean Monnet’s Memoires that Monnet invented the term, European Community, on 21 June 1950. Schuman used it in many major speeches before Monnet ever uttered it.
Thus the European Community was the key that would ensure lasting peace, not only for Germany but for her neighbours. Schuman gave speeches in Germany about the reunification of Germany. He gave them in German so there would be no misunderstanding.
But let us quote another witness, Robert Buron, who records in a diary what Schuman said to him on 10 July 1953. Schuman described the options: Germany might make a secret deal with the Soviet Union or it could develop a real democracy inside a democratic European Community. Only the latter would safeguard the peace.
‘Sooner or later, wished for or not, the reunification of Germany will happen. It may be in a climate of détente between East and West that would help the development. It may occur in a rapprochement of Germany alone with the Soviet Union, after elections favourable to socialists for example. The balance of the world will then be thrown into question.‘
Schuman told him that the existence of the European Community had already caused the Soviets to stop and think about a less aggressive policy than world revolution. In Schuman’s opinion, he recorded, ‘the pursuit of a European policy is one of the causes for the decision of the new Russian rulers to move towards détente.‘
Schuman was no longer in office as minister. Europe required a well informed governmental spokesman to speak out about the real meaning of the European Community. He should give ‘a frank explanation between French and Russians about the policy of European integration.‘ However Gaullists, nationalists and the large Communist party made this as difficult as possible.
Today we need not only someone to speak to the Russians but to our own European citizens about the real meaning for them of a supranational, democratic Community.
Schuman said: ‘If I believe profoundly in détente and in peace, I believe equally deeply that the strategy that we have traced is only realizable in practice if Western Germany remains solidly anchored to our European construction.
‘It is necessary to progress at the same time with European integration, the improvement of East West relations and German unification. Everything lies in the art of progressing simultaneously.‘
In the 1950s Schuman and others foretold that the Soviet Union would collapse before the end of the century. He warned that Europeans should be ready to unify the Continent including Russia and Ukraine.  But none of today’s politicians were listening either.

SECS5: The Counterfeit Euro is a Democracy-Destroyer

The euro is pulverising European democracy. It is destroying democracy not only in Greece but in all other members of the euro zone. It is also destroying people’s hopes for a real democracy at the European level. It has caused a huge rift from north to south and between the crisis-ridden Euro Zone and EU Member States outside the system. It has replaced trust by hyprocrisy. It has stirred up nationalism across the Continent from Scotland to Catalonia to Greece. In Greece, it has stoked hatred and memories of WW2 instead of understanding.
In the 1950s Robert Schuman and the Founding Fathers laid out the road to a democratic, solid Community currency. Its supranational principles are different from either intergovernmentalism or federalism.
Ask a politician today to define ‘supranational’ — and you will see why ignorance or arrogance has got Europe’s money in such a mess. In the 1990s politicians of a later generation chose the pseudo-federalist Delors Plan. It is destroying not only the consensus for a common currency but tearing apart European society.
The European currency was supposed to unite. It was supposed to bring harmony amongst the peoples. It was supposed to bring an era of prosperity and investment in a common future.
It has failed.
Why? It is what Robert Schuman called a ‘counterfeit’ currency! Schuman provided plans and institutions to create a real Community currency but politicians started dismantling them in the 1950s. Ever since they vie in further destructive acts against honest, democratic money.
It is a pathway to pecuniary perdition.
That is why the only alternative to the morass that European leaders have embarked on is to look again at the principles that gave originally Europe its longest period of peace and brought about its greatest prosperity.

The supranational currency system belongs to the people. It would provide full and open democratic input from

• businesses,
• workers and
• consumers.

It would safeguard the democratic rights of various regions so that the rich would not dictate to the poor. It would be based on open government, not closed door meetings of financial ministers.
It would allow governments to adjust their currency to the needs of their individual Member States.
The pseudo-federalist Delors Plan euro does none of these. It is controlled by the secretive, closed door EuroGroup. Who are they? They are national, not European representatives! They are not practically involved in the needs, fears and plans of industry, workers or consumers. They are party political. They come with a party ideology. And as history has shown, they have loose moral and ethics when it comes to doing what ordinary people have to do — balancing the household budget.
They are the people should be kept at more than an arm’s length from any currency — finance ministers!
The recent events on Greece has cut a swathe of earthquake-like devastation in European democracy.
Firstly, the ‘democratic leaders’ showed themselves completely inadequate to call out corruption in Greece for what it was. Initially they did not insist on anti-corruption measure before serious consideration was given to EU membership. Instead the EU leaders in the Council and also in the Commission dolled out masses of money that only added to the corruption such as in the Bank of Crete scandal.
Neither sides learned lessons. Major Mistakes:

• politicians should not be in charge of money regulation.
• Politicians should not be able in any way to influence a currency, as inflation is hidden taxation;
• politicians should not choose their central bank governor and certainly not in secret;
• Money is public property not the politicians’ plaything. It requires democratic supervision.

Let’s go back no further than the beginning of the month of July 2015. On the first day of the month, five European institutions published a report called: ‘Completing Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union.‘
Called the Five Presidents’ report, it was meant to have all the authority of those who consider themselves Europe’s leading politicians. It was prepared by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the so-called Euro Summit, Donald Tusk (also president of the European Council), President Jeroen Dijsselbloem, president of the secretive EuroGroup, Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, and Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament.
It says:

A complete EMU is not an end in itself. It is a means to create a better and fairer life for all citizens, to prepare the Union for future global challenges and to enable each of its members to prosper.

Oh!
The report is the fruit of ten months’ work of eurocrats of these five institutions. It was launched at the October 2014 EuroSummit.  1 July marks the start of Stage One.  What is that about?

Stage 1 (1 July 2015 – 30 June 2017): In this first  stage (‘deepening by doing’), the EU institutions and euro area Member States would build on existing instruments…. this entails boosting competitiveness and … and enhancing democratic accountability.

Really?
The Commission in reply to my question firstly said that they could not give any details about ‘enhancing democratic accountability‘ as it was a technical matter! When questioned further about a referendum, the Commission said that it did not think referendums would be involved.
Days later, the Greek government announced that it would have a referendum. They urged the Greek populace to vote No. The peculiar motion included out-of-date and unfinished, technical, negotiating positions on euro zone and IMF loans as an annex in English.
Clearly the referendum did not meet Swiss standards of democratic accountability. It was a political operation equivalent to those used in left-wing dictatorships like the DDR or the Soviet Union. In this case it was cleverly crafted to get extreme right wing and centre parties to join in the parody of democracy.
Did the Commission denounce this referendum, because referendums were not part of their yet undisclosed ‘democratic enhancement‘? Did they say that such a farce could not lead to real ‘democratic accountability‘?
Not at all!
The Commission President urged the Greek people to vote Yes! But he spoke ominously about Grexit, the exit of Greece. But from what? the euro? But the politicians’ own treaty, the Treaty of Lisbon, makes it abundantly clear that there is no exit possible from the euro. The Commission as ‘guardian of the treaties‘ repeated that many times recently. It was written in the earlier Maastricht Treaty, specifically to discipline governments to more-or-less balance their budgets and reduce debts. (Several States refused to join the euro as they considered it unworkable.)
Any student of human nature and of history would know that asking politicians not to devalue the currency (through inflation) as a hidden tax is asking the impossible of them. (Soon after the euro was launched, Germany and France were hauled up before the European Court for breaking the ‘Stability and Growth Pact‘.)
What happened in the referendum?
The Greek people voted massively No.
Thus Greek people lost any ability to gain from the extraordinary efforts the IMF, the EU and the European Central Bank had made in bending the rules.
What happened next?
The new Greek government finance minister came to Brussels and accepted all the onerous conditions (and much more besides) that had been rejected by the Greek people in their referendum.
The government then put all these difficult measures of extra taxation and austerity to the Parliament.
What did the Parliament do, seeing that the Greek people had spoken clearly against all of them?
It passed all the onerous measures! In the 300 seat chamber, 229 voted for them and only 64 were against. The puzzled observer might ask: What sort of democracy is that? The same people who had enthusiastically voted for a dubious referendum with the great hope of everyone voting No, were now turncoats against the democratic vote of the people.
What can be more pernicious than the secretive EuroGroup and its secretive political acolytes grinding down any sort of parliamentary and popular democracy into fine dust of public hypocrisy and Brussels-based serfdom?
But that was not the end of it. Far from it. The new vastly increased loans have to be paid for by other European taxpayers. The loans have to be passed in all parliaments of euro Member States. An emergency loan was needed to pay off the IMF. The euro Member States agreed to €7.16bn in short term financial assistance to Greece under the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM).
Was the IMF happy? A few days later, an IMF press release expressed their view: Greek debt was ‘highly unsustainable‘.

The financing need through end-2018 is now estimated at Euro 85 billion and debt is expected to peak at close to 200 percent of GDP in the next two years, provided that there is an early agreement on a program. Greece’s debt can now only be made sustainable through debt relief measures that go far beyond what Europe has been willing to consider so far.

So what do we have of ‘enhanced democratic accountability‘ even before the first month of Stage One ends?
We have the European Commission, which is supposed to be an impartial, guardian of the treaties, saying:

• enhanced democratic accountability’ is a technical matter,
• a referendum is ruled out,
• a referendum is ruled in,
• the Commission President can urge Member States which side to vote on,
• it can impose conditions on the people and government against the clear result of the referendum,
• it can insist that the Greek Parliament vote in favour of these conditions that the referendum has rejected.

The Greek government can

• call for a referendum at short notice, which legally means nothing,
• take the result of the referendum seriously,
• re-negotiate the EU/IMF loan deal to the detriment of the Greek people,
• force the parliament to accept this democratically dubious deal,
• thumb their noses at Greek democracy and the European institutions.

Instead of doing down the IMF, the Greek government was forced to repay the IMF loan. The IMF in return announced that Greece is heading for economic meltdown and the European institutions are going to have to pay through their noses for the foreseeable future.
We have the other Member States of the euro zone, who vote in their parliaments who are ignorant

• whether referendums on the euro are permitted,
• whether the Commission is supposed to speak out urging Europeans vote Yes or No in referendums in general,
• whether euro-loans and imposed conditions of taxation and structural changes under such conditions are legal in EU law,
• and despite this ignorance, their own parliaments are being forced by Brussels to vote according to its timetable,
• and in practice these other ‘democrats’ show they are willing to vote in their parliaments in this state of financial, democratic and legal confusion on the future of the whole EU.

The reality of the counterfeit euro is much worse. There are several other Member States who could end up in a similar dilemma to Greece. Prepare yourselves!

SECS4: Greek Crisis shows the need for a New EU Currency system

In world monetary history, some currencies have lasted more than a thousand years. That won’t happen with the present euro. Its self-destruction is as certain as anything in politics.
What is now urgent is to reform the currency on a solid basis. It will be a world-beater. A sound currency must retain a long-term store of value. Like tax it must have means for taxpayers to have proper representation in its destiny.
This eurDemocracy commentary predicted more than three years ago that the present euro will collapse. It is not due to Greece alone or other failing economies. The conclusion is based on Robert Schuman‘s own analysis of monetary systems. It was also clear from debates in the 1990s. Then the currency’s essential democratic foundation envisaged by Schuman and others was eliminated from the new euro design by politicians who willfully ignored warnings of a future calamity.
The present euro system is fatally flawed democratically. It is not only the extreme left-wing Greek Syriza party (which is nominally pro-euro) but the growing, powerful movements against Brussels-based party political cartels that will dictate its fate. They are vehemently anti-euro and in the foreseeable future will, in governments, kill the project from within.
Only a higher degree of democracy can save a European currency. It must show itself to the benefit of all. It must demonstrably improve the common good. The European currency must be

'in the service of the people and must act in accord with the will of the people.'          (c.f. Pour l'Europe, p55)

Secondly the present euro also has an economic illogicality in its foundation, making it unworkable. How did it arise? Today’s failure culminates from politicians arrogantly deciding that they could design a better European monetary system than Europe’s Founding Fathers. They at least were aware of the lessons of monetary history. The contradictions are now bringing turmoil on the money markets and threatening the political cohesion of the European Union.
Does that presage the end of the European Union? Not at all! The supranational Community system is stronger than its currency — even a flawed and suicidal one.
A new euro system will have to be built up based on sound economics. In effect Europe’s leaders have another chance to change their present failures into success and make the European currency the envy of the world. The Founding Fathers wanted to see their currency not last just for five or ten years but be stable for centuries. As designed, it would outclass any currency in history– even ones that lasted a thousand years!
What currency applies in a Community system? A Community currency. A supranational Community needs a Supranational Economic and Currency System. A real Community currency would bring wealth and investment unseen since the early Communities. Schuman, working as France’s Finance Minister, Prime Minister and architect of the European Community, helped initiate the ‘Thirty glorious years’ after WW2.

• A system based on intergovernmentalism won’t work. (Europe is more than intergovernmentalism!)
• A system based on federal principles won’t work. (The EU is not a federation!)
• A system based on Optimal Currency Area theory won’t work. (Europe is based on freedom of choice!)
• A currency that requires a fiscal, that is tax, union, without proper democratic representation won’t work. (The euroGroup is not even classified as a European institution in Treaties and yet has become the governing body of the EU!)
• A European currency whose value and Central Bank policy are dictated by politicians and not by the market will always fail.
• A system without a proper supranational democratic control of its economy and currency won’t work.

The euro has had only five or six years of stable interest rates across its Member States. It has been in crisis ever since.  The following graph from UCL gives the interest rates in excess of that offered by German bonds in euro.

The Greek crisis is only one of many challenges attacking the economic foundation to this euro system. It will certainly not be the last. Other Member States are likely to present Brussels with similar or worse problems in the near future.
A currency has to be based on public confidence. The flight of confidence and trust is as fatal as the flight of capital from banks.
The present crisis, and those with Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy have already exposed the fragile foundations. The process is under way and the outcome is inevitable.
The European public is now divided into those who see the euro continuing and those who see it failing. Those critics losing confidence in the euro are gaining in numbers. Hence the numbers of those who see it lasting longer are on a downward slope. The movement is in the direction of continual loss of confidence. Consider the consequences.
Those who in countries like Greece fear for their future have already involved in the multi-billion euro capital flight. They borrowed as much as possible, then stored notes or transferred them, buying where possible material assets abroad. They feared both that the Greeks might bring in a new Drachma or that their euro deposits in banks might be riffled as the euroGroup threatened to do during the Cyprus crisis.
European institutions sometimes made the matter worse. When European Central Bank tried to support Greek banks, directly or indirectly, it only accelerated the flight capital. Greek debts rose to some 325 billion euros, a third of this is flight capital.
What’s behind the Greek crisis? Three possible causes stand out among others:

• corruption,
• political immaturity or
• political sabotage.

The first factor is political corruption. That is far bigger than most people think. By corruption I don’t mean just the Greek system. It was obvious from before Greek entry into the three Communities in 1981 that Greece remained highly corrupt after the dictatorship of the Colonels.
Parties of the Left and the Right tried too often considered electoral victory as a means to load the bureaucracy and the governmental system with their own supporters. Giving Greek bureaucratic posts to party loyalists is as corrupt as turning the Commission into a party political secretariat. An effective civil service must be above politics and political ideologies.
Greeks have a long history of what is called in Brussels ‘party political parachuting‘ their buddies into the civil service. It also leads to internal rivalries, turf wars and bribing. Externally it leads to paralysis.
Robert Schuman warned:

‘Amassing more officials is no guarantee against abuse … but is often just the result of favouritism‘ He said: ‘Administrative rigidities are the prime danger that threaten supranational services.’ (Pour l’Europe, p146.)

Greece also remained undeveloped as an economy, without proper attributes of a modern economy. For example Greece lacked a proper land registry system. Brussels paid some 100 millions euros so that they could have one. The money disappeared without a registry appearing. Brussels gave more money! Who owns land in Greece? No one knows! Nor does it have a fully working tax system. Yet these and many other failures were known to all the politicians of the time, including the Commission.
In 1978 the then European Commission President, Roy Jenkins, said that of the three Member State candidates, Greece was the least prepared and the least qualified. Which then entered the Community system first? Greece! Was it reformed? Judge for yourself! Joining the Community, Greece availed itself of handouts supposedly to reform its economy. The Brussels largesse led to the Karamanlis and Papandreou scandals involving dirty dealings in the Bank of Crete.
Thus corruption englobes the Greek governments of all stripes. But corruption also engulfs the European Commission. During the Gaullist years, France lied about the Community’s origin, and denied Schuman’s key achievements. The Commission played Gaullist tunes. France milked the rising German industrial power and the European Communities for all they were worth.
Under Roy Jenkins, a British Liberal politician, no real reform took place. Governments decided that the Commission should be populated only by party politicians, excluding all other citizens. This undermines public trust.
It is fundamentally dishonest. How? because none of the Commissions — who are supposed to be the ‘honest-brokers’ of Europe — were honest with Europe’s taxpayers.  Commissioner-politicians dished out European taxpayers’ money without proper controls. Commissions watched with open eyes and closed lips while fellow politicians in other countries committed fraud to buy votes. (They wanted to do the same.) They did not insist on reform over Meat Mountains, Wine Lakes, phantom autobahns going nowhere, fraudulent national statistics, and the fraudulent misuse of taxpayers’ money for political purposes. Meanwhile they embraced corrupt politicians of left and right as comrades and colleagues.
Under Jenkins the Commission decided to consider itself overtly party political. The Commission was always a political body but the Treaties forbade Commissioners to retain any interests,

• whether commercial or not,
• especially lobbying or other interests,
• party political membership,
• jobs, whether paid or not,
• and for three years after retirement not take up any employment in sectors of their Commission expertise.

In short they were forbidden from involvement in anything that might undermine public confidence. They have to show they are totally independent as honest brokers. Clearly politicians who insist on retaining membership of a group (like a political party) that lobbies and is ideologically driven will lose public confidence and trust. Their political enemies and non-party opponents of the general public consider them ‘partisan‘.
Honesty is paramount. The Commission as Europe’s honest broker has to be honest. During the 2011 Greek crisis on the euro, the then head of the euroGroup said: ‘When  it becomes serious, you have to lie.‘ Other politicians besides Mr Juncker colluded in this nefarious mission that undermined all public trust in the Community institutions. It only made the Greek crisis worse and worse. Mr Juncker was not alone either when he said of the referendums on the Lisbon Treaty/ Constitutional Treaty : ‘If it’s a Yes, we will say ‘on we go’, and if it’s a No we will say ‘we continue’, we go forward.’
A travesty of Magna Carta and Community Charter rights! The treaty drafts were soundly defeated in referendums in France and the Netherlands and were set for catastrophically higher rejections in other States before they were denied the public.
And now Europe is faced with its most serious Greek crisis and another on/off referendum. In November 2011 Greek Prime Minister Papandreou proposed a referendum on the euro crisis but was dissuaded from carrying it out. A referendum is supposed to be democratic but the Syriza coalition government called a no-time-for-real-debate Blitz Referendum. It seemed quite content to modify, postpone or abandon it and maybe their people and pensioners too in their polemic against Brussels ‘blackmail‘. So much for Greek democracy.
What of the second factor. Is the Greek government composed of immature politicians?
The IMF chief Christine Lagarde famously commented that negotiations is only possible ‘when there are adults in the room.‘ Does this indicate unwillingness to negotiate or perhaps an alternative strategy refusing to come to an agreement? The Greek government had to pay 1.3 billion by the end of June to cover the IMF loan and avoid a default. By not agreeing to anything the Greek government lost billions of euros due to be returned to it on condition some sort of agreement was made. These funds would have paid off a great deal of the Greek debts, far more than the sums due before 1 July. This money is now lost for ever.
What of their skittish behaviour? For the IMF’s negotiator Christine Lagarde:

“We have received so many ‘latest’ offers, which themselves have been validated, invalidated, changed, amended, over the course of the last few days, that it’s quite uncertain exactly where the latest proposal stands,” she told Reuters.

Is this apparent confusion and incoherence due to the fact that the Greek government is a coalition and the Syriza party itself is a coalition. It is a grouping of

social democrats, democratic socialists, left-wing nationalists, feminists, anti-capitalists, centrist-environmentalists, as well as

Marxist–Leninists,

Maoists,  Trotskyists,

Eurocommunists,

Rosa Luxemburgists and

Eurosceptics.

Some of these radical neo-Marxist/ Communist groups have not raised their heads in public in the West since 1968, others since WW1! Others form part of the alter-globalist movement aimed to fight the ‘neo-liberal’ IMF, International Monetary Fund.
We now come to the third possibility. Is there a neo-Marxist strategy in the Greek action? The Marxist system has internal contradictions that led to analysts like Robert Schuman predicting in the 1950s that the Soviet Union would collapse before the end of the century. Classical economists and historians also predicted that the Soviet system would tear itself apart as it had no means to value objects, products and services on the market. Hitler’s economy made similar errors and ended in absolute failure.
The Soviet system had a ‘Gosplan’ setting production targets by quantity (and often neglecting quality and demand). It also set their prices (without market information!) It had no consumer feed-back! (Complainers were class traitors!). As there were no free consumers, the Gosplan had to copy prices on the free western markets. The private enterprise system of the free market not only reduced prices but incorporated technological improvements that left Soviets in a cloud of dust. Maoists took an opposition stance against progress and Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward‘ ended in de-industrializing China and killing upwards of 40 millions.
Is the new Syriza working according to a common anti-banker plan? The apparent changes of drafting documents, late arrivals and changes of negotiators may be explained by coalition disagreements. They might equally be consistent with a strategy to unnerve the Brussels negotiators to gain time and ensure maximum capital flight and nuisance power. This is also apparent in the violence of denunciations of Brussels: ‘blackmail‘ and fiscal ‘water-boarding‘.
When one party accuses the other of blackmail, it often means they are really the blackmailer. In this case three financial institutions and 17 euro Member States independently believe that they are negotiating in good faith. Some like Ireland, Portugal, Latvia and Spain have had similar conditions imposed on many of them. Now they are being as flexible as possible to Greece. They are not blackmailing. So who is blackmailing whom?
Why nuisance power? According to Marxist dialectic the new agreements with Brussels on the euro involve a new synthesis that resolves the old problem (for example, debts, government overspending, unworkable pension schemes, overpopulated civil service, untaxed industries and corruption). The opposition force, (Brussels and the bankers' 'neo-liberal' creditor Troika) is called the anti-thesis. The Marxist dialectic resolves the thesis and anti-thesis into a new synthesis.
What then is the anti-thesis of the Marxist radicals? One new synthesis would be the reinforcement of the link to the people against the fiscal ‘water-boarders‘. In other words, a referendum. Sufficient extra complications, extra documents, new proposals and fresh negotiation calls were submitted so that the Syriza government might even withdraw from the referendum if they felt public opinion was turning against them with the wrong answer. The referendum could be cancelled if the Brussels Troika betrayed trust!
Was the referendum an act of desperation or part of a strategy? The clues indicate that it was part of a strategy. First clue was their reaction to the unexpected euroGroup meeting that Europe’s heads of government declared AFTER the European Council of 25-26 June. It is clear the Greeks were taken by surprise. In the middle of negotiations on Saturday, the Greek negotiators were called out of the meeting. Their Prime Minister was about to announce the referendum.
They were stopped mid-negotiation. What sort of ultimatum/ blackmail is that?
The second indication is that the referendum document where the people are urged to vote NO, has, as its annex, documents which were being discussed on Saturday and are incomplete. Furthermore they are now useless. The basis for the documents was an agreement to be made on 30 June at the latest. Thus the Annex on which the Greek voters are to vote is legally useless!
The conclusion can only be that either the Greek government did not read the text itself and they are incompetent, or that the Greek government planned the referendum well in advance and were taken by surprise. They assumed that they would have a legally valid, final document published after the European Council that they could claim was Blackmail.
What is the end game for neo-Marxists? The final synthesis for Marxist theory is the collapse of capitalism due to its internal contradictions and the rise of the Workers’ State. In this, everyone would get a minimum wage from some sort of fiat currency with no material backing. The Soviet ruble was such a Workers’ currency. It was neither stable (it was devalued several times) nor did it reflect real values. It did not stimulate innovation by being a store of value. It was also not the currency of the workers, as workers who had saved their earnings immediately lost them in devaluations when the decimal place was moved in their bank accounts. Nor was it controlled by the workers. The Soviet Politburo decided when and how such decisions were made.
Many members of Syriza have long-standing relations with Russia, many in families back to Soviet times. Curiously when Prime Minister Tsipras visited Mr Putin the question of a Russian loan was not discussed. A Russo-Greek gas pipeline was. The Russian monopoly gas supplier, Gazprom, is now coming under scrutiny by the Commission for abuse of dominant power in the gas market, where in some EU Member States it supplies the totality of the gas.
One thing that Russia and many in the Greek government have in  common is the destruction of the European supranational law and Single Market system. Russia could then play of one Member State against another and gain the highest price in its bilateral contracts. Through its energy geopolitics it could dominate all Europe.
Russia and Greek debt are a major threat to the EU’s euro system. But if you think the present crisis is bad, be warned! Worse is yet to come before politicians see sense and it will get better.

Carta1: A travesty of Magna Carta -- Europe's Lisbon Treaty!

This month British, American and many Commonwealth countries celebrate the Magna Carta of 15 June 1215. The document signed at Runnymede by King John at the insistence of English and Welsh barons reaffirmed ancient British rights, some of them dating back more than a thousand years before King John. That is well before the fifth century Anglo-Saxons arrived (or the Normans in 1066). The codification of so-called ‘Welsh Law‘ by tenth-century ‘King of the Britons’ Hywel the Good before the English conquest stands as witness to some of these Common Law rights.

Chirk Codex in Welsh

The Magna Carta forced the English king to recognize that Justice was not at the whim of the ruler but a supranational value. Both Anglo-Saxons and Normans were a little slow in learning. Since time immemorial ancient Keltic and Cymric laws always maintained the principle, enunciated at the start of their assemblies ‘the country is above the king‘ ‘Trech gwlad n’ arglwydd’
Robert Schuman, the Founder of the European Community system, was a passionate theoretician and practitioner of democracy. He was an admirer of the British and American democracies. His definition of democracy improves on Lincoln’s famous adage of democracy being ‘of the people, by the people and for the people.’
Schuman said that ‘What characterized a democratic state were the objectives that it proposed for itself and the means it searches to attain them.’  Thus while European unity was a good goal in the modern world what was also important was the means by which it is attained and the instruments by which that unity is governed by the people. He continued:
‘It is at the service of the people and acts in agreement with it.’
Service to the people is a vital criterion. It is, in other words, the search for the common good. Just by writing those words evokes the need for a broad debate about what is ‘service’ to the people. What is really the common good? It requires the public exploration of ‘European values’ based on spiritual and moral foundations.
That is why Schuman drafted a Great Charter of the European Community. Also known as the Europe Declaration, it was signed by all the Founding Fathers when they agreed to the Community principles on 18 April 1951. They also signed the first treaty, that of a European Coal and Steel Community, whose basic idea was to expose in practical terms how peace could be constructed and how democracy could be erected at the European level.



The Great Charter of Europe gives as a major principle the following:

In signing the treaty founding the European Community for Coal and Steel Community, a community of 160 million Europeans, the contracting parties give proof of their determination to call into life the first supranational institution, and consequently create the true foundation for an organized Europe.
This Europe is open to all European countries that are able to choose freely for themselves. We sincerely hope that other countries will join us in our common endeavour.

That assurance and guarantee was vital as the Community system stood starkly and courageously in contrast with so-called ‘People’s Democracies’ of the Soviet zone of control. No west European country could boast the  98 percent turnout of voters in the German Democratic Republic (DDR) from 1950 to 1970s. What is even more ‘enviable’ was the extent that 99 percent voted for politicians of nominal Christian Democrat, Liberal, Socialist and other parties who supported the common Communist programme. Only a fraction of one percent voted against this Soviet-controlled programme!
Were elections really free? Obviously not. But at least the DDR let the people vote, even in referendums! The common programme was devised in secret without free public criticism or open to the free press.
Where are we today?
This month of June 2015 is also the tenth anniversary of the burial of the sad affair of the Constitutional Treaty! (Sometimes it is erroneously called the ‘Constitution’. It was never a real constitution, as its author, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, constantly said.)
France voted against it. With a 69 percent turnout, 55 percent said ‘NON’! The Netherlands were more emphatic — 69 percent No! Other Europeans in other States were set to vote against it. But their right to hold a referendum was withdrawn! By whom? The representatives of the people!
Schuman always respected the referendum votes (for example on the Constitution of the Fourth Republic). Even de Gaulle did too, although he used the referendum as a means to maintain autocratic power against the influence of political parties. When the people said No to his reform proposal, he resigned. How many politicians resigned in 2005?
Unfortunately the present breed of politicians is even more cynical and underhand. The politicians served their Constitutional Treaty up again. Not as a full text, but as amendments to the current treaty for the European Economic Community. Their document was a list. It was an incomprehensible mass of ‘omit this’ and ‘replace it with that’. The politicians said publicly that it was exactly their plan. It had to be incomprehensible to pass it through parliaments! They refused to publish the complete, amended treaty. One Belgian minister said:

‘The aim of the Constitutional Treaty was to be more readable. … The aim of this treaty is to be unreadable. … The aim of the Constitution aimed to be clear, whereas this treaty had to be unclear. It is a success.’ (Flanders info, 23 June 2007)

Was he sacked? No, he became a European Commissioner!
Instead of a referendum ( which was sure to be lost!) the political class agreed it amongst themselves. It gave parties money and power. They voted it in in their parliaments under party discipline. In some parliaments this was voted without seeing the text! In others, like France, it required a change to the national constitution to enable this unethical manoeuvre to be done. The European Parliament to its lasting shame refused to publish the full text before symbolically voting Yes on it.
No further referendum!
It produced the same result as the ‘Constitutional Treaty’ but was renamed the Lisbon Treaty. Was it identical? Yes except for the removal of articles on the official flying of the European flag and playing the European anthem. What a coldly Machiavellian piece of democratic mockery that action was.

Do European flags fly today at the Commission’s Berlaymont?

The basic principle that Schuman enunciated (signed by all Founding Fathers as the Charter of the Community) was that all steps towards European unity must have the wholehearted support of the people by democratic vote at all levels of European activity.
The Founding Fathers provided several independent institutions to guarantee that the Community would be easily distinguish as ‘Democratic Europe’ from the false and artificial ‘People’s Democracies’ of the Soviet zone.
These include:

• a Council of Ministers that was open to the press in all its deliberations and decisions (not yet happened!).
• A European Parliament that was elected under a single set of electoral rules (not yet happened!).
• Consultative Committees that were elected by European Associations (not yet happened!),
• Commission whose members  are honest as Court judges and have thus divested themselves of any relevant interests including membership of political parties (not yet happened and party membership is to be mandatory!).

Aren’t you glad that Europe today is not cynically controlled by Communists!

Eretz5: Vatican's immoral treaty with 'Palestine' will bring confusion and war.

The Vatican is to sign a treaty formally recognizing an entity called ‘the State of Palestine’. It is a big mistake. It is likely to lead to war, disputes and further injustice. Is the pope ignorant or has he lost his balance? He called PLO leader and Holocaust-denier Mahmoud Abbas  ‘an angel of peace’ and  gave him a medal.
Angel? Do angels tell the truth? Abbas (war name or kunya: Abu Mazen) wrote a holocaust-denying PhD in Moscow of the USSR as part of a Cold War disinformation campaign. The book is still reprinted and in circulation. No retraction. Abbas wants a Jew-free State. Is the pope’s commendation for Holocaust-denial and a Nazi-style Judenrein State the sort of moral conduct Europeans would expect from a religious leader?
Peace? Would any right-minded person call Abbas, who glorifies hijackers of a public bus who killed in cold blood 37 people (12 of them children), ‘an angel of peace’? Just a few weeks ago Abbas celebrated the March 1978 coastal road massacre in his Facebook post addressed to Israelis! He even exaggerated the bloody gore by saying there were 80 victims. He then told Israelis that ‘they should take their body parts and leave! The Vatican can hardly be unaware of this and other devilish remarks about murders or his fellow ‘Palestinians‘ in Syria.
The Vatican is not a member of the UN, nor was it a member of the earlier League of Nations. As a Permanent Observer State, a status granted in 1964, it maintains that ‘ its only competency is in elucidation of questions of principle in morality and public international law.'
The so-called ‘State of Palestine’ has no elected government, no defined borders and is in cahoots with terrorist organizations like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood vowed to destroy Israel. In their constitutions, the PA’s National Covenant and Fatah’s Charter  maintains a similar objective. What would a PA State look like? Even at present the PA has a law that any Arab selling land to a Jew will be killed.
It took a pope like John-Paul II to recognize Israeli statehood! When? 1994! Nearly a half century late!  Why? Is the Vatican’s bizarre move now due to a resurgence of antisemitism to sideline the State of Israel?
It is shocking to normal, outside observers that the Vatican — which should know something about  the history of Israel and be familiar with the Bible — is showing such deplorable ignorance about both. Worse, such a treaty would likely ignite and stoke up further violence and war in the Near East. This move also shows that the present Vatican leaders have lost touch with basic principles of moral philosophy.
Let’s assume the technical ‘Palestine’ government of  Fatah and Hamas exists. What then is the purpose for the Vatican to sign a treaty with a group allied to Hamas which openly proclaims its objective as the destruction of Israel and the Jews?
What would be the purpose of signing a treaty with Abbas whose corrupt regime trains children to become martyrs by killing Jews, glorifies jihadis and celebrates them in public monuments and sport? Would that be morally acceptable in the streets of Rome?
Let’s turn to international law.
All States who joined the UN agreed to abide by the international law established by the League of Nations. That included the recognition of the historical borders of the Land of Israel.
Israel owes its international law recognition, not just to the UK’s Balfour Declaration of the Lloyd George government but principally the decision taken by the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers at San Remo, on 24 April 1920. The Jewish State was thus incorporated into law of the Treaty of Sèvres. Recognition became part of the conditional entrance requirements of the League and the later United Nations. This is a recognition of long-standing, continuous, undisputed rights, not a grant by other States. Like Britain it has been recognized as a 3000 year-old independent State, regardless of some invasions.
All Arab States subscribed to this when they became members of the UN. Indeed the very existence of those States relies on a similar, parallel process of international law. Deny one and they also deny their own existence!
What did those same Arab States do in 1948? They illegally declared war on the newly proclaimed State of Israel. Seven national armies, Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, tried to march into this territory ILLEGALLY in unprovoked war. The Arabs living inside western Palestine were not planning an attack. The armies invaded an area that the United Nations still referred to as ‘Judea and Samaria’.
Yes, Arab Muslim armies illegally invaded an area where Jews lived called Judea! This is one reason why Arab oil-fed propaganda after the 1967 Six Day War wanted to change the name of Judea and Samaria to ‘West Bank’. How could they influence world public opinion by accusing Jews of illegally occupying Judea?
Judea became illegally occupied by Jordan.
(Jordan was initially called Transjordan. On the East Bank of the Jordan river, TRANS-Jordan indicates it was a transitory arrangement of the 1920s. It was trans, meaning across but still part of Israel, being across the Jordan from Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.) Jordan’s ‘king’ was hardly ‘legal’. The usurping Wahabite ‘king’ Saud had earlier expelled the Hashemites from Saudi Arabia!
The term ‘Palestine’ in 1948, both before and for many years afterwards, meant the Land of Israel. ‘Palestinian’ meant ‘Jews’ of Israel. No Arab State called ‘Palestine’ ever existed in history. (Only in the 1960s did the concept of ‘Arab Palestine’ arise, thanks to Egyptian and Soviet disinformation services.) Before this Arabs called themselves ‘southern Syrians’ or identified by name as Egyptians, Syrians, Saudis etc. They still do.
What’s in it for the Vatican? Is it claiming title to property it occupies in Israel? Does it still believe it has rights to tax-free extra-territoriality for the places it occupies? Does it still want Jerusalem (Israel’s capital since 1967!) to become an international City under its control and influence? Is that why the Vatican refuses to recognize the ‘eastern’ parts of Jerusalem as being part of Israel? Israeli officials pose the question: ‘What makes the Roman Catholic Church different from all the other nominally Christian churches?’
Does the Vatican move completely reject international law and justice?
A treaty with Palestinian Arabs puts the Vatican in the same thieving camp as some Muslim Arabs. Let me explain. One Arab proudly boasted that the property he had was legitimately his because it had been given to his forefathers by Saladin. Saladin was a foreign military invader. This Kurdish leader, born in Tikrit, who founded the Ayyubid dynasty in the twelfth century was proclaimed sultan of Egypt and Syria. He conquered Syria and fought the Crusaders.
Saladin, like the Romans before him, had no legal rights. During this process he killed some Jewish inhabitants of Palestine. That does not make property transfer legitimate. Saladin is no more. Neither is the bloody sword of his caliphate. Property belongs to the Jewish families from whence it was taken.
The Crusaders probably killed far more Jews. They burned the Jerusalem synagogue to the ground. They gave Jewish property to the Roman church.
So which of the two, Saladin or the Crusaders, really owned the land? Obviously neither. They merely dispossessed or killed some of the rightful owners whose families had lived there for three thousand years. The Greeks, Syrians, Romans, Islamic and Mongol hordes, Ottoman Turks did the same.
The Crusaders of the twelfth century may well have built the so-called Tomb of David. Above it is the Cenacle, also claimed by the Vatican. It is falsely called the Upper Room of the New Testament. (It was nowhere near there!)
You do not have to be a Permanent Observer at the United Nations with a self-given remit for morality and international public law to conclude that the Vatican has no legal right to this property or any other given by the Crusaders.
Is the pope a descendant of Jewish King David? No, he claims he is a Non-Jew, of Italian extraction from Argentina. Does the Roman church (among all the other churches) have any claim to Davidic property? No. Legally the property stays in the Davidic and Jewish family. There was no corporate ownership in Israel in biblical times. Nor is Rome in Israel!
If the Vatican wants to continue a claim for Jewish property, if it want to recognize a State of Palestine on the ancient land of Israel, then it had better be prepared for a shock. The Vatican should await a claim from the  Gauls, the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Franks and ‘Holy Roman’ Germans.
They could apply Vatican moral and legal logic. They and others who once invaded Rome may lodge a property claim against the Vatican!

Circus9: European Commission EP Report discloses 2019 Election Dirty Tricks

The Christian Democrat  EPP, Socialists and Liberals think they have the eternal right to select old and pensioned-off politicians to be their Commissioners. The European Commission, was once a politician-free zone. It was then much more effective politically. One Commission president was a law professor, another was an engineer, a third was formerly a trades unionist.Together they stood firm against the powerful nationalist policy of de Gaulle who wanted to destroy the very idea of a European Community. Party hacks would have compromised the idea of Justice and European rights.
How do I know? Just look what party politicians are doing today, ignoring treaty articles on citizens’ rights in the smoke of their own propaganda machines! Read their reports to each other!
Now composed of entirely of party politicians contrary to Treaty law, the party political Commission has just explained in a Report how it wishes to seize permanent, undemocratic control of the European Commission. It won’t discuss flagrant political bias and abuse against the citizens, financial corruption and tax.
The treaties say the Commission should be composed of a small number of independent, experienced people from all walks of life. The treaties forbid national governments choosing national representatives. They forbid party politicians becoming Commissioners because that is a temptation for corruption. These rules have been turned on their head.
In 2013 the governments in Council were supposed to reduce the number of Commissioners.  What did they do? They decided without telling the public that the Commission would be entirely composed of party political national buddies acting as representatives. And they refused to tell the public of their decision or discuss it!  Is this shocking fact discussed in the new Commission report?
What do you think?
Last year’s European Parliament election had the lowest turnout of the voters — EVER! It was not due to apathy. The nationalist parties around Europe whether the Scottish Nationalist Party in UK or the National Front (FN) in France or the True Finns in Finland can all bring out their voters. The so-called ‘anti-Europeans’ like UKIP, are also increasing their support. Greece has its neo-Communist, anti-austerity party. Italy barely escaped from its own instant party government led by a comedian Beppe Grillo. In 2013 it rose from nothing to become the largest party in the Italian Chamber of Deputies.
The parallel decline in the European vote while the nationalist vote is booming shows that voters believe that European democracy is not working. The only way Joe and Jane Voter have to influence European policy is to select a nationalist party to fight their corner behind the closed doors of the Council.
Europe celebrated 65 years since its first treaty. Yet it has NEVER had a proper European election as repeated in articles in all the many European treaties. It has 28 national elections for the EP, each with its own electoral rules that favour national cartel parties. This allows some nationals to have the equivalent of ten or more votes and others none! The report says there is a need to act ‘far in advance of the next elections‘ but is the need for uniform, fair electoral rules discussed?
What do you think? What the report discusses is how to get politicians permanently into the 2019 Commission as antidemocratic, nepotistic ‘lead candidates‘. Mr Juncker selected by a handful of EPP faithful then got only 10 percent of the electorate to vote for him. In UK it was close to zero.
(The cartel parties think they know all the tricks. Take the example of the first-past-the-post trick in the Mother of Parliaments. UKIP’s 3.8 million votes resulted in just one seat in the House of Commons! Compare that with 56 MPs the SNP got with only 1.5 million votes! But social media is encouraging instant, rebel or anti-establishment parties, overtaking a century of tradition.)
Both nationalists and anti-Europeans are beaming a red light and blasting a siren warning to Brussels.
The Brussels political clique — composed of the EPP (Christian Democrats), the Liberals and the Socialists — are not listening. Their eyes are tight shut. They are already on the road to try an fleece the voters of democratic rights for the next European Parliament in 2019.
What does the European Commission’s official ‘Report on the 2014 European Parliament elections‘  say? The cover is labelled (or should I say libels) ‘Justice and Consumers‘!

‘The 2014 elections stemmed the steady fall in overall turnout since the first direct Elections in 1979.’

Oh! Really?  If that is so, can all Europeans now go to the betting shop and place a big bet on the election turnout in 2019 being bigger? The Commission, as far as I know, has no powers of prophecy. It has Gaullist-style five-year or ten-year plans such as that for 2000,  and so on to 2020.  After many populations in several referendums had rejected outright what later became the Lisbon Treaties, these ‘plans‘ refused even to discuss democracy. The 2020 plan also refused to discuss energy blackmail that costs Europeans trillions of euros. That for 2030 refused to discuss how Europeans made war both ‘unthinkable and materially impossible‘.
These plans are characterized by myopia and blindness. Today Europeans are robbed by gas and oil energy providers and surrounded by hostile forces in the East and by religious fanatics across the Mediterranean and in the Middle East.
Europe needs proper democracy. Even putting to one side the shock victory of UK Prime Minister David Cameron over the entire gaggle of pollsters, that totally inaccurate prediction of stemming voter decline is not what an impartial Commission of civil servants should be publishing at taxpayers’ expense. It is politicized and politically biased nonsense. Eurocrats are supposed to publish facts not fiction.
The Commission’s full-colour 24-page report has no reference number or ISDN except saying that it is from the Commission’s Justice and Consumer section. The Eurocrat folks there must have a bizarre sense of law and justice and a rather twisted view of consumer rights!
The truth is the 2014 EP election saw the lowest voter participation EVER! Therefore the trend is down, down, and continuously down! There was no upturn. No break in the trend. Here are the actual figures given in the report showing there is no stemming to the downward trend. If it were not for some Member States like Belgium and Greece where voting is mandatory by law, the average would be even lower. Many other States would reflect the woeful rates of the Czech Republic ( with18% turnout) or Slovakia (13%). Here are the figures from the Report itself:
1979      1984      1989      1994      1999      2004      2009      2014
62        59         58.4           56.7         49.5          45.5         43         42.6
percentage voter turnout at European elections.
The politicians who have seized control of the institutions cannot even raise enthusiastic voters among the populace of the new Member States! In Croatia only one in four voted. Why? People ask: ‘What’s it all for, seeing the budget and practical results of the funds are cooked up in secret in closed door budget or tax discussions!’ No press is allowed! What a travesty of ‘no taxation without representation‘ — the cry of the American Revolution. The representatives of Justice and Consumer Affairs have formed an opaque cartel of corruption.
Why would the Commission want to publish a bald fib? The answer is in the Report’s next sentence.

These elections have laid the ground for future European elections and established a clear link between the results of the European Parliament elections and the choice of the European Commission President.

The Report is an official Communication to the European Parliament, the Council, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of Regions. That means it’s an official legal document. It also exposes another lie.
Together with the Court of Justice these bodies represent the real institutions of the European Community system regardless of what the fraudulent, fog-ridden Lisbon Treaties say. (They say that the Court of Auditors, the European Central Bank are institutions. If they really were, why don’t they get a copy?) Only the Council, Parliament and Consultative Committees have the right to revise the Commission’s legislative proposals. Did the Report explain that?
What do you think?
The Founding Fathers said that not only should Members of the European Parliament be elected on uniform European basis, the Members of the Consultative Committees should be elected on a fully European basis. They should represent European economic, regional and professional organizations, with powers equivalent to the Council of Ministers.
The Report asserts that the elections were

the first to take place since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty and were fundamentally different from those which preceded them. For the first time, a direct link was established between the outcome of the elections and the appointment of the European Commission President.

This too is a bit of a fib. None of the treaties (including the Lisbon Treaty) say that any legal authority exists linking the EP elections  and the selection of the Commission’s members. They say the REVERSE! Both institutions should be independent of each other. More importantly, and for very good reasons of anti-corruption, the Commissioners should all be totally independent. They should be the opposite of partisan politicians. They should be non-partisan.  Thus the ‘direct link‘ which the report speaks of is a corrupting link! It is flannel designed to flaunt the law of the treaties and Justice!
The Lisbon Treaty merely states that the Commission should be selected after the European Parliament elections. It defines the TIMING. That was thoroughly discussed when the treaty was put together. Many people objected to the ‘parachuting’ of politicians into the Commission.  It is against the letter and spirit of the Community system. Candidates should come from all citizens, engineers, lawyers, NGOs, unionists, journalists, academics, diplomats, all who can show they have a conscience free of party ideology. The Lisbon Treaty actually guaranteed this:

Every citizen shall have the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union. TEU article 10.

The politicians are creating a trick to ‘interpret’ law differently — as a means to create jobs for their party guys. They want the total exclusion of normal citizens who are independent. All who are not members of three main political party groups — about 98 percent of the EU’s population are OUT.
What are the final objectives of the politicians’ cartel on seizing the Commission and making it a party secretariat? They want to make sure for the long-term future that only politicians can be Commissioners.
It is a policy that will lead to disaster. They may get away with it for a bit. But what happens when their national governments change?  What happens when the National Front controls France? What happens when UKIP breaks through the frustrating first-past-the-post barriers and forms a coalition government or — horror of horrors — forms its own government? What happens if and when Scotland with a SNP government separates from the UK? What happens in Spain, Catalonia, Italy, Greece? The rise of one nationalist movement will encourage the rise of nationalism in neighbouring countries or the parent nation.
If the governments become more and more nationalist, then the Commission will be composed in part or in whole of ultra-nationalists!  Who will speak impartially, without fear or favour, for the European common good? Who will stop national governments fiddling the election rules and giving extra votes to its parties? The ‘mainstream’ cartel political parties, who have put their politicians’ careers ahead of citizens’ rights,  will eat the fruit of their own corruption.
Consumers and Justice will suffer most.

Peace1: Why doesn't Europe divulge the keys to its unprecedented peace?

How did the European Union construct the bases for its longest time of peace it ever experienced? The EU presently outstrips the USA in GDP and global trade.
In May, Europe commemorates the end of WW2 in Europe. Europe was left in ruins, its industries destroyed, its populations decimated by killings and injuries, its economies torn by debts and inflation.
May also celebrates a far more important event. Five years after the end of war, Robert Schuman’s Proposal of 9 May 1950 brought about an unprecedented peace: the means to make war ‘not only unthinkable but materially impossible.’
War, impossible?! That sounded extraordinary in the 1950s. The reality is even more extraordinary today.
Europeans are now living in a 70-year period of peace, longer than any other in all written history – more than two thousand years. The core of today’s European Union composing France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, knew war every generation back to before Roman times. Today, three or four generations have never seen their home towns destroyed, their families killed or such horrors as concentration camps or forced labor.
No one foresaw such a peace. It was not ultimately due either to the Marshall Plan of 1947 or NATO, formed 1948, generous though they were.
In March 1950 the US-based Foreign Policy Association published a report on ‘Europe and the United States.’ It was written and finalised by Vera Micheles Dean, its research director. She made an extensive tour of Europe speaking with government ministers and lecturing on US foreign policy around Europe. This think tank expressed the common opinion:
‘We realise… that the United states, no matter how generously inclined, cannot under the most favourable political circumstances re-establish the economy of the continent on the foundations of 1914 or even 1939. Some of the foundations … have vanished beyond salvaging; others are perhaps not a total loss, but … their future contribution to the continent’s economy remains in doubt.
‘No power on earth can remedy Europe’s impoverishment as a result of two world wars. The only remedy one can recommend for the future would be the avoidance of conflicts so costly in terms of human values and material wealth. Whatever we do, Europe will sooner or later have to adjust itself to a radically altered world economic situation and face the fact that the singularly favourable position it enjoyed during the five centuries following the discovery of the Indies and the of the New World and the conquest of the colonies in Asia and Africa is now drawing to a close. While the Russians and the Communists have capitalised on the predicament of western Europe, they did not bring it about.’ Teenage Germans are ‘strongly imbued with Nazi ideas.’
The same conclusion was reached by the annual conference of US ambassadors in Europe in 1949. They considered European solutions as ‘pipe dreams’ and their ‘golden goose’ of the Marshall Plan was being sacrificed to various forms of nationalism. They were keenly aware of Soviet designs on Germany especially the industrial Ruhr.
General Lucius Clay, US Military Governor of Germany in March 1949 concluded: ‘I repeat what I said in a cable a few days ago. We have lost Germany politically and therefore it really does not matter except that history will prove why there was World War III. No gesture can we make to draw Germany westward so why do we spend money on Germany. Thank God I will be out of it soon…’ Papers of General Lucius Clay, p. 1063.
Robert Schuman was often a lone voice. His own political party often opposed him. Yet he was convinced as French Prime Minister and Foreign Minister that Europe must use this last chance for peace, others said was impossible. He was not only the designer of the peace, but a shrewd political technician and an impartial visionary for a positive future.
He told the US Secretary of State Acheson before his Proposal that the supranational Community system would produce the greatest period of prosperity since the Middle Ages.
In a world where Europe is increasingly surrounded by war in Ukraine, Georgia, and barbaric violence in the southern Mediterranean, Syria and the Middle East, isn’t it high time we took a longer, harder look at how Europe gained such an enviable peace?
How do the European institutions commemorate ‘Schuman day’ — now proven to hold the key to Europe’s longest peace? They open their buildings to the public and show them their empty offices! What a  way to communicate the moral vacuum of the present political class!

Cartel1 World War Slaughter and Europe's longest Peace

What was the origin of World War One? A gunshot at Sarajevo? Don't you believe it! What started the Second World War then? Hardly another assassination attempt on a grand duke!
Why then is Western Europe now living in the longest period of peace in all its more than 2000 year history? What are the real causes of war? The New Testament Letter of James, the brother of Jesus Christ, to the 12 diaspora tribes of Israel asks 'Where do your wars come from?' and targets selfish, godless, materialistic greed. If that is the cause how did Europe find a solution that brought it unprecedented peace, safety and prosperity?
Has James anything to do with the Schuman Proposal to create a novel and more authentic form of European democracy? The truth of the extent of human greed and lust for power is so shocking and distasteful for the public palate that few politicians or historians are willing to broach the subject.
But our lives depend on being honest with ourselves.
True  democracy is not only about voting choice but about empowering the public good.   A Cartel has the opposite effect to a just Democracy. A small unrepresentative group  of manufacturers, for example, can fix the price of goods and cheat the consumer. A political cartel controls levers of power. Voting brings no results.
Cartels can do far worse. They can dictate war or peace. They can control all aspects of what in the west is considered democratic society. They act for profit against the common good of the people.
This month, April 2015, marks the hundredth anniversary of the slaughter of British, French, Australian and New Zealand (ANZAC) soldiers on the Turkish beaches of Gallipoli during the First World War. Many of these brave troops were shot down in a futile attempt to seize the gateway to the Black Sea and outflank Germany's war of the trenches. Worse, they were killed and wounded by British bullets fired from British guns by Turks and Germans. A British warship there was sunk by British mines. Arms were sold to the enemy by British manufacturers in pre-war armaments cartels that surpassed all Europe's borders. In the postwar years British ministers again justified selling more arms to Turkey!
Arms firms sold their wares not even mainly to their 'home' armies and navies but indiscriminately to customers abroad. Quite often the 'home' market paid higher prices than export customers.
'One of the most anti-social, not to say detestable but also the most effective methods of soliciting orders,' said Nobel Peace Prize winner Philip Noel-Baker, {was} 'playing off one country against another'
Using a combination of flattery, patriotism and prestige the Swedish manufacturer of the first submarines fired up its own naval race. The first export submarine was sold in the 1880s to desperately poor Greece. Then two were sold to Turkey. Then after their warning to Russia of the dangers of Turkish submarines in the Black Sea, they sold a newer model to Russia.
Submarines later became a lethal instrument in two world wars, killing thousand of civilians in liners and cargo ships. On 7 May 1915 a German submarine sank the world's largest passenger liner, Cunard's Lusitania with the loss of more than a thousand passengers including 128 Americans. The USA entered the war in 1917.
The second technique was an arms or materials cartel.  Arms firms based in different countries worldwide cooperated in a blood-stenched 'Arms Ring' fleecing the global public.
The arms cartel enveloped all the major 'patriotic' manufacturers, many of which still survive to this day in contrast to the millions of WW1 dead. They include the great national champions of the 'defence industries': Britain's Vickers, Armstrong, Brown, Cammell Laird, France's Schneider-Creusot, Chatillon, Germany's Krupp, Dillingen, Deutsche Waffen, Thyssen, Austria's Skoda, Italy's Terni, USA's Bethlehem Steel, Carnegie Steel. Together with banks like Deutsche Bank, they formed joint companies, like the United Harvey Steel Company in 1901, to expand arms sales, share profits and exchange patents and licenses. Harvey Armour and Krupp armour plate used nickel and chrome in patent processes that firms all shared to boost arms race sales.
The advance of more powerful guns required that warships should be protected with ever thicker steel. By successively creating new techniques for armour-plated ships and then armour-piercing shells and so on, the arms ring was able to sell more and more 'Dreadnaught' or later 'Invincible' battle ships. It also rendered earlier models obsolete. Thus was ignited both a naval arms race and stoking an ever-increasing patriotic desperation for weapons supremacy. The same applied to other land armies with the advent of the machine gun and other inventions.
The power of these cartels extended to banks, the media and parliament and the organs of government. Six months before the start of WW1, Krupp stocked up on strategic materials. This included Nickel from the French monopoly producer, Le Nickel. Its board of directors included a French banker, a British arms trader and two Germans acting for Krupp. The shipments were to be made through neutral Norway. In the weeks after war had broken out, the Norwegian ship, Benesloet, with 2500 tons of nickel, half paid for by Krupp, was stopped by the French cruiser, Dupetit-Thouars.  A court in Brest declared it contraband of war but an urgent message from Paris ordered its release. The Court it Brest refused to comply ... until on 10 October 1914 an order from the Ministry at the insistence of Le Nickel, confirmed its release. Its cargo duly reached Krupp's plant at Essen via Norway.
Thus it became difficult to distinguish who was working for anti-democratic cartels and who wasn't.
As revealed in the new book, Jalonneur, on Robert Schuman and world peace, cartels (ideological, financial and industrial) were the major cause of two World Wars. Schuman's native Lorraine with its high-grade iron ore was the constant German 'war aim' throughout the war because of the German steel and arms cartel.
What happened then? This year in May we commemorate also the longest period of peace in all the recorded history of western Europe. Previously every generation knew war. It had prepared for war, gone to war or was trying to recover from the ruins of war.
No one foresaw such a peace. In 1950 diplomats and think tanks predicted that Europe would continue to be an even more disastrous zone of war and destruction. Schuman was often a lone voice. His own political party opposed him. Yet he was convinced as Prime Minister and Foreign Minister that Europe must use this last chance for peace, even if others said it was impossible. In that way he was not only the architect and designer of the peace, but the constructor and technician supervising its foundation. He was a visionary of a future undreamed of.
He told the US Secretary of State before his Declaration that it would produce the greatest period of prosperity since the Middle Ages. Europe embarked on the highway to peace and prosperity  that it had never known in all its past.
Robert Schuman proposed and created the world's first international system to control cartels. Based on the industrial constituents, steel for armaments and coal for energy and the chemical for explosives, Schuman founded the European Community for Coal and Steel. It is the embryo body from which has grown the European Union.
It is not coal and steel that is so important but the democratic means to control cartels.
Today the European Union is faced with hostile and jealous powers that supply the energy it lacks to provide for itself. They also wish to destroy its democratic anti-cartel system.
On the east lies Russia with its huge gas and oil reserves. Together with its former Soviet States of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, Russia today supplies 40 percent of the EU's petroleum. Gas is even more critical. Some EU Member States rely 100 percent on Russian gas from its huge gas monopoly, Gazprom. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, I published a book in 1995, Russia and the Danger for the European Union. It proposed that the EU and Russia could work together to enhance democracy and the use of energy resources. The book was expanded and republished in 2000. Copies were given to the European Commission and other EU leaders without noticeable effect.
War has broken out in Ukraine, the umbilical link for gas to Europe. It is the chokepoint both for gas price blackmail and political leverage on the EU.  The European Commission has now announced that it is beginning to take action against Gazprom for abuse of its dominant position. In other words Gazprom is refusing to recognize the European law. The Kremlin would like to render European law and especially anti-cartel law void so that it can exploit its monopolistic and dictatorial position in some vulnerable States like the Baltics and others that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. In the 1990s the EU refused to take heed of the warning of this danger and create a democratic Energy Community based on supranational principles.
But Russia is not Europe's biggest cartel problem today.
(to be continued)