EU: End 50 years of OPEC Foreign Policy Blackmail

Speaking after the visit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Brussels, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Frederica Mogherini made an astonishing declaration of ignorance.
Again!
“We always say that the Two State Solution is the only realistic one,” she said. “I have not heard by anyone or from anyone, not only in the last weeks but in the last decades any other idea than Two States to preserve Israeli security. The Palestinians need to have their own country under their own authority.” One reinforced with Hamas, weaponized by Iran, and aimed at the destruction of Israel? Or one with a democratic, peaceful government that does not glorify terrorism and holocaust denial?
Urging the EU to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Mr Netanyahu said: “While I respect Europe, I am not prepared to accept a double standard from it.”
It is a pity the Israeli Prime Minister does not make more frequent visits to point out Europe’s blatant hypocrisy. The previous visit by an Israeli prime minister was 22 years ago. So much for the allegedly powerful Israeli lobby! The PA’s unelected Mr Abbas, recipient of EU millions, comes quite regularly without stopping at the press room to explain why he pays salaries to those who murder children.
Under the British Mandate, “Palestinian” was the term for JEW! Hence we could also add to hypocrisy theft of nationality (by the Soviet KGB Disinformation service). “Palestinians” are not mentioned in the famous 1967 UN Resolution 242. Why? Because they did not exist.
The real Palestinians had changed their nationality to Israeli.
In 1964 Egypt’s dictator Nasser and the Soviet communists invented the Palestine Liberation Organization to arabize and communize the entire territory of the Palestinian Mandate. That included the “kingdom” across the Jordan!
For a viable solution perhaps High Representative Mogherini should look further back in time. Let’s say before she was born in 1973. Perhaps she should also look at home, to the European Community system itself, the astonishing Schuman Plan principle! That brought real change and peace to former Nazis, communists and antisemites! It attacked the core problem.
The Community System has powerful tools to disarm globalist cartels — international cartels that control Europe’s economy and finance and block free media. They were among the main causes of two world wars. The Community created the world’s first international anti-cartel system. BUT IT IS NOT BEING USED AGAINST THE OIL CARTEL.
Jerusalem politics has become Europe’s Stupid Zone. Europe proved many, many times that the “Two State Solution” does not work. European experience extends not just over the last decades but over a period of more than two thousand years!
The Two State Solution coincides with the first major attempt to blackmail Western Europe’s Foreign Policy. It dates from the 1967 Six Day war.
This year is the fiftieth birthday! Oil Blackmail will not bring peace!
It should be recalled that in 1967, there was little that could be called European Foreign Policy. Foreign policy was a national affair. The European Communities provided the only legitimate authority and framework. They could make international agreements only in very specific sectors.
The European Coal and Steel Community was founded when coal was the main fuel in Europe. Euratom was created to exploit the oil-free energy of the nuclear industry and provide for nuclear non-proliferation. The European Economic Community with its Customs Union brought the dimension of international trade agreements. Only these three Communities could make legal, European law.
The founding father of European unity, Robert Schuman (initiator of the European Communities, the Council of Europe, NATO) was sensitive to real Arab interests. Algeria was then an integral part of France. France had colonies and protectorates along the Mediterranean and in Africa. But with judgement of a fine lawyer, he was pro-Israel and pro-truth. He was Prime Minister in the crucial period of November 1947 to July 1948, and Foreign Minister from 1948 to 1953. He instructed France to cast its United Nations vote in favor of Israel.
Warnings were made in the 1950s about Europe’s increasing reliance on oil. The 1956 Suez crisis showed how fragile links to the Middle East oil were. However despite attempts of the good Europeans to face up to potential Islamist energy blackmail by combining the defense of the three Communities, the policy was blocked by one factor. General de Gaulle took power in 1957. He changed the foreign policy of energy-poor France from pro-Europe, pro-Israel to a pro-Arab one because of oil.
That was myopic.
In the 1967 oil crisis France got off the hook. But the Arab oil exporters wanted to use the Oil Weapon to change the foreign policy of the other major States. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Libya, and Algeria stopped oil shipments to the United States, West Germany and United Kingdom (not yet a member of the Communities). Why? Because they didn’t insist Israel return to pre-1967 borders. And they weren’t friendly to Islamic indoctrination.
That is the real birth of oil blackmail aimed at dictating to the world an Islamist, anti-Israel foreign policy. Although the British came up with a two State solution first, it was as a temporary political measure.
In 1923 the British lobbed off the biggest chunk of the Palestine Mandate territory east of the Jordan and ‘gave’ it to the Hashemite Abdullah, expelled from Arabia and dismissed from Iraq. (They weren’t allowed to take over Syria.)
Bad move! That action was without full legal approval of the League of Nations. No other European State recognized the Trans-Jordan. Nor did Saudi Arabia under the Wahabis. Nor any other country who fancied getting some oil. Only Pakistan. In 1937 the British suggested a two State solution in the Peel White Paper to further skin Israel. It had no traction. In 1948 Hashemite Trans-Jordan illegally occupied half of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria
In 1973 the Arab Oil Exporting Countries (OAPEC) again deployed the Oil Weapon to change global politics. It first tried a total petroleum embargo for some States, cutting oil deliveries 5 percent per month for others. Then it quadrupled the price, reducing the European economy to shatters. It also imposed poverty and seemingly endless wars on developing countries. Then it quadrupled the prices again. So much for Saudi sympathy to fellow Arabs, and even less for Europeans.

If the EU foreign policy chief cannot imagine any other policy than Saudi Arabia’s anti-democratic Two State Solution, 1967 borders and divided Jerusalem, it is because she and many of her officials are now the defenders of Saudi oil blackmail policy. It rules in Europe and at the United Nations. They drank it in with their mother’s milk.
For decades after WW2, the price of oil was under two dollars a barrel. It gave Arab oil exporters fat profits, yachts and a playboy lifestyle. Two dollars then is equivalent to under 10 dollars today. Massive oilfields have since been discovered.
After WW2, thanks to the Community system, Europe’s growth was continuously more than 5 percent for thirty glorious years. De Gaulle put Europe’s anti-cartel tools in the wood shed, and shut the doors. Schuman was written out of history.
Europe became the passive victim of a Trillion Dollar Rip-Off.
The Oil Weapon and the Two State Solution Blackmail reduced the European economy to a horse-driven van. Foreign Policy became

“Yes, OPEC Cartel, sir, we believe in the Two State Solution and deny ourselves an independent opinion about Arabs, Islam, democracy, European values and truth! With oil, truth is so slippery! We dhimmis adhere to your Fake History and Fake News!”

Under the Oil Cartel OPEC, the price rose to near 150 dollars a barrel. At that point, the oil blackmail graft amounted to about ten percent of global GDP. Some blackmail! Saudi Aramco is the richest company in the world bar none. Europe became its dhimmis, its slaves and tax mules.
Wake up Europe! Put an end to hypocrisy and blackmail! Open the doors!

Trump highlights Jerusalem; EU warns of Dark Days ahead

When President Trump confirmed Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the EU warned of Dark Days ahead. Is Jerusalem the light of the world? Does it throw light on Europe's black record?
“President Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem has a very worrying potential impact,” EU’s Foreign Policy chief, Frederica Mogherini, said in Brussels. Making a surprise, unannounced visit to the EU Commission’s press room, she forecast that “it has a very fragile context and thus the potential to send us backwards to even darker times than the ones we are already living in.”
What on earth did she mean?
What are the darkest days of Europe’s post-war history? Has she forgotten? Oil is blacker than midnight.
Well she has an excuse. She was only a few months old at the time of the Yom Kippur war. That took place in October 1973. It was the year of blackest Blackmail.
Europe is still held hostage. Its Foreign Policy is still owned by the oil sheiks.
Proof? The Saudis and others turn the oil spigot off at will. The supply diminishes, the price rockets. The European consumer consistently pays six or eight times the free market price for petroleum. Or twenty times on occasion, a 2000 percent price hike! (Where a non-cartel oil producer sells on the free market a highly profitable price lies between between five to ten dollars a barrel.)
If the EU had a self-respecting Foreign Policy it would defend its citizens from such predatory international cartels as OPEC, now working in cahoots with Russia. Global cartels would not be artificially hoisting energy prices. They would not be attacking the European economy like blood-sucking leaches.
Second proof. The EU now feels confidence enough to bring anti-cartel measures against American-based modern industries such as Microsoft and Apple. But what about oil? For that the EU External Action Service has no fuel in its tank.
The high cost of imported energy amounts to two or three times the entire EU budget. It could be a fraction of that if the EU had a real Foreign Policy. Europeans would get a boost on a prosperous economic up-curve.
Third proof. The Community system has the power potential to stop international cartels. Action depends on the will of its foreign policy operators. At the start of the EU with its European Coal and Steel Community, ECSC, the Commission, then called the High Authority, dismantled the greatest threat to world war. Even in the early months of its action, it was able to dismantle the steel, coal and armaments cartels that were the cause not only of the WW2 but WW1. Robert Schuman created the ECSC and Euratom to enable Europe to be energy-independent. Today’s EU leaders think they know better.
In August 1973 Saudi's King Faisal warned USA and the world that it would use its Oil Weapon to break any country's independent foreign policy supporting Israel. Then came war. Following the October 1973 Egyptian attack on Israel, Arab nations were surprised then shocked to see Israel was not crumbling like tissue paper. In fact Israel was winning.
That was the year when the Arab OPEC countries attacked Europe. The Arab League told the Europeans that if they did not immediately cease from supporting Israel they would get not one drop of oil. They imposed a 100 percent embargo on Europe. No more oil. The European economy went into a nosedive. Some countries like the Netherlands and Denmark were totally dependent on Arab oil. They were only saved from utter ruin by emergency European measures and sharing, thanks to the European Community’s single market established in 1953.
Did the Europeans stand up with back straight and tell the sheiks where to go? What did they respond honestly and frankly to King Faisal who only a few years earlier, to show his civilization, had issued a decree outlawing slavery in his kingdom? At last! For the first time in a millennium thousands of slaves gained their freedom. During the 1967 Six Day War, the Arab oil exporters had already cut oil by 60 percent to Europe. Had the Europeans learned lessons about potential financial slavery in 1973?
Hardly.
A meeting of European foreign policy chiefs just a few weeks later on 5 November 1973 issued a Joint Declaration on the situation in the Middle East.
Defiance? A search for justice and truth? None of it. It spoke of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. That was the first time they had done so. And there is a good reason why. They bought a lie to get oil. They all knew how Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt maltreated and confined their so-called 'Palestinian refugees.'
Palestinians? Up to the Declaration of Independence by David Ben-Gurion’s government in May 1948, only Jews were known as Palestinians. They were people of the British Mandate for Palestine.

Under the British Mandate, Arabs preferred to be called by their tribes, Southern Syrians, Egyptians, Saudis or Bedouins. Readers of the Jerusalem Post should know that at this time it was known as the Palestine Post.
The parents of Moshe Dayan, hero of the Six Day War, held British passports declaring they were Palestinians.

Dvora Dayan, Palestinian wife of a       Palestinian

But the term Palestinian was not long thrown away in the dustbin of history. Nasser, the Egyptian dictator, working with the USSR Disinformation Department of the KGB pulled it out of the trash. The Arab League met in Cairo in 1964. They created the fake Palestine Liberation Organization, to foment trouble with the Soviets’ many other anti-colonist terrorist groups. After the 1967 war, the brutal Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat became its third chairman in 1969.
Remember at that time Palestine meant the geographical area of the British Mandate. In the League’s Mandate Article 7, ONLY Jews were given Palestinian citizenship!
This was agreed by the world's powers -- including the Arab States!

"Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose of giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, to entrust to a Mandatory selected by the said Powers the administration of the territory of Palestine, which formerly belonged to the Turkish Empire, within such boundaries as may be fixed by them; and
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and
Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;     ...

ARTICLE 7.

The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine."

The Palestinian National Charter or Convention glosses over any precise legal and political issues, and legitimate identity, by confounding the geographical term with broad brush appeal to the Arab nation. Warning! Disinformation and Fake History!
There was never in history an Arab nation called Palestine or an Arab people called Palestinians. Neither was Jerusalem ever a capital of an Arab State. It is the 3000 year old capital of Israel that is today legally occupied.  No "Palestinians" are mentioned in the famous 1967 UN Resolution 242. Why? No such people existed! Jordanians, the Hashemite Arabs expelled from Mecca who illegally occupied the vast, eastern Mandate trans-Jordan territory, had in 1948 occupied Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem illegally and militarily.
Warning! Disinformation uses the same words but changes their meanings. The Palestinian National Charter or Convention glosses over any precise legal and political issues, and legitimate identity, by confounding the geographical term with broad brush appeal to the Arab nation.
There was never in history an Arab nation called Palestine or an Arab people called Palestinians. Neither was Jerusalem ever a capital of an Arab State. It is the 3000 year old capital of Israel that is today legally occupied. No “Palestinians” are mentioned in the famous 1967 UN Resolution 242. Why? No such people existed! Jordanians occupied Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem illegally.

Article 1:
Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.
Article 2:
Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.

It is this poisoned, drugged cake that the Europeans began to bite into when they made a Joint Declaration, under the informal, non-legal framework known as Political Cooperation.
Having seen the Europeans scattered like flocks of sheep before ravenous wolves, an Arab delegation descended uninvited on the European Summit at Copenhagen on 14-15 December 1973. I witnessed the shock of European leaders! They were discussing 'European identity'. In a reference to the planned new holocaust of Jews and the near lethal attack on European economy, they referred to these black events with diplomatic circumlocution as the 'energy crisis'.

"The Heads of State or Government considered that the situation produced by the energy crisis is a threat to the world economy as a whole, affecting not only developed but also developing countries."

As the Arabs worried that total subjection of the European economy might slip out of their control, as other energy sources became available, OPEC quadrupled the price of oil to turn open blackmail into long-term financial blackmail. Then they slapped Europe again to make Europeans sure they knew who was boss. The prices were quadrupled again in 1979, reducing Europe’s huge financial surplus to desperation and impoverishment.

The other side of the ledger is bulging. The multi-trillion dollar Saudi Aramco is by far the richest company in the world. It has ample resources to pay the best public relations and media. It can easily oil the wheels of politics. Such was the way in the 1960s when PR firms recast the embarrassing terminology that the United Nations had used. Samaria (the capital province of the Israelites) and Judea (the tribal land of the Jews) became the West Bank.
  In July of the black year of 2008, the Islamist wrecking ball smashed again. It took a decade to wind up OPEC's explosive demolition machine. Twice as high as before!
 

The petroleum cartel jacked the price up to 147 dollars a barrel. It pilfered from the world economy more than ten percent of global GNP. Again the world fell into destitution. (In 1972 oil was under two dollars!)
But recent events have cooled this theft. Shale oil and gas and the arrival at last of more intelligent energy sources threaten the future of the blackmailers. Hence the major changes in the Arab world.


Europeans are slow and too arthritic to escape from hostage today. Mme Mogherini’s reaction is typical of the Stockholm syndrome of captives defending the hostage-taker. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson needs to spend more time in Brussels to bring those living in the dark into the light of day.
May the captives gain their freedom!

2. J'ACCUSE! EU Fake History, Fake Democracy! Fake News!

27, November, 2017

This year 2017 will go down in history as the year European leaders conspired in Fake News, Fake History and Fake Geography! With their slogan EU60 they will be ridiculed by future generations as fraudsters using Fake Maths too. Why do they lie about dates?
FAKE DEMOCRACY!
The Brussels leaders say this year is Europe’s 60th Birthday. That’s clearly untrue. In 2012 the Nobel Prize was awarded to the European Community/ EU for more than SIXTY years contribution to peace in Europe! Count it! Do some elementary arithmetic!

With the headline J’ACCUSE, Emile Zola wrote an open letter to President Faure of the French Republic covering the front page of the newspaper L’Aurore, 13 January 1898. It caused a sensation. It was meant to.
In this article Zola denounced the lies and establishment cover-up of the French government in the Dreyfus affair. The French army officer, who happened to be a Jew, was falsely accused to being the source of espionage for Germany and Austria-Hungary. The writing in the dossier sheet was used as evidence that the Germans had received French secrets. It had been fished out of a waste bin in the German embassy by a French cleaning lady. The handwriting was nothing like that of Dreyfus. That did not deter the experts. They asserted that “the lack of resemblance between Dreyfus’ writing and that of the bordereau (dossier cover list) was proof of a ‘self-forgery'”!
It was obviously a Fake but the Fake experts said it was so good a Fake, it must mean that Dreyfus was guilty! In truth it was the experts who were fake and the Establishment who were traitors! Note how Fakers use Fake logic! The entire world whose writing did not resemble the bordereau writing would be guilty by that reasoning! Only one person wrote that bordereau.
The bordereau writing actually matched a major who was working in the French General Military Staff. The guilty man had the suspicious Austro-Hungarian name of Esterhazy. But that made no difference for the anti-Semitic establishment who wanted to put on an anti-Jewish show trial.
Zola exposed the unpalatable truth. He named names in the high-level cover-up by the military staff and French Government. Result? He was accused of libel and had to flee to England!
But he was proved right. Two men were innocent, Zola and especially Dreyfus. They suffered most. Today there is no doubt about who is guilty. The truth always comes out.
The victim was all of Europe. The entire French military had to be cleaned up. It had dire consequences. France was left in a weakened state when it faced the Germans in World War One.
High-level fraud is not uncommon. That is the lesson that the present European leaders need to learn. Their guilt will affect all of Europe. Nor will the truth of history redound to their glory.
During the whole of 2017, European leaders have connived in propaganda fraud. They have spent millions of tax-payers money to hide Europe’s real democratic history.
Fraud hurts! Sometimes it costs lives, many lives. Take Stalin. Did the USSR survive his Fraud and Fakes? Photographs of the Stalinist regime in the USSR became notorious. The Politburo of the early days was republished from time to time. Each time the one or two of the original faces disappeared and the photo was made up as if they never existed. They were either in a Gulag camp or dead allegedly for treason. Stalin cost millions of other lives.
Today the European Union Politburo is interested in wiping out one face in particular, Robert Schuman. This is done not because that face is guilty of anything. Quite the reverse.
He is responsible for the miraculous rise of Europe as a super-power in the world today. The keys to war and peace in Europe — and elsewhere — are the greatest heritage of modern times. Why are the Brussels Politburo throwing those keys away? Personal aggrandizement? Ignorance? Petty jealousy? or what Schuman called the routines of power, the inability of politicians and bureaucracies to think in other terms than Europeans had for more than a thousand years?
The Brussels Politburo are especially keen to wipe out the signing of the Treaty of Paris on 18 April 1951 and the Great Charter of Rights of European Citizens (DECLARATION COMMUNE) that was also signed that day. That showed how West European States can demonstrate they are real democracies and expose the false democracies as they existed in East Germany and elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain.
The guilty neo-Gaullist Brussels Poltiburo wanted none of this. While the public expected the founding Paris treaty to be renewed in 2002, the Council Politburo failed to do so -- without any public debate, never mind any referendums.



Today the guilty are more attached to money and markets than democracy and openness. They want to say that Europe’s miraculous rise came from its common market. They want people to believe their future depends on globalization. False! The guilty try to cover-up their foul deeds and those of earlier betrayers of the past. Who are the guilty today?
EU photos and histories today only show the guilty. These are the people in Rome who celebrated Europe’s fake history by saying Europe began 60 years ago with the 1957 Treaty of Rome and the European Common Market. The same goes for their propaganda. Their histories mainly start when Schuman was no longer active or alive.
Why?
Why do they date EU history from Rome in 1957 and the signing of the treaties of Rome? Why chose an event where Robert Schuman, the Father of Europe, was absent? Could it be that that was the year the anti-democratic Charles de Gaulle seized power in France?
That certainly is true. Today’s leaders in France and Germany want to celebrate the Franco-German axis as if it was the start of Europe. That is utterly false history. De Gaulle wanted to rule and dominate Germany and all the other countries such as Italy and the Benelux.
Let’s see if there is any resemblance of EU60 to the truth.

• Schuman’s Proposal saved Europe from catastrophic wars. The EEC Customs Union didn’t.
• Schuman said that the Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) made ‘war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.’ The EEC was about trade and customs.
• The first Community healed relations with post-Nazi Germany. Rome didn’t.
• Schuman created the bases for solidarity, democracy, justice and a means to define Europe’s destiny and service to the world.
• Schuman provided the means for Freedom-loving Democrats to deal with the inevitable forces of globalization.
• The first Community defined the FIVE democratic institutions. Rome didn’t.
• The first Community introduced supranational Democracy. Rome didn’t.
• The ECSC created Europe’s first Single Markets in 1953. Rome didn’t.

We could add a few other achievements like being co-author of the 1949 NATO treaty and initiating the Council of Europe, 1949 with its Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, 1950.
Writing Fake History is like trying to make Dreyfus’s handwriting look like Esterhazy’s. Let’s add some other facts.

• De Gaulle attacked Schuman. He tried to destroy the Community system.
• De Gaulle invented the Franco-German axis as the motor of Europe because he could then control Germany.
• De Gaulle turned the EEC into a milch cow so that up to 70 percent of taxpayers money was spent on the CAP and farmers, usually French peasants.
• De Gaulle would not attend Schuman’s funeral and stopped Adenauer, who had already agreed, from attending.
• De Gaulle had nothing to do with European Reconciliation. Adenauer wrote that Schuman achieved this in 1950. De Gaulle wanted to expand French borders to the Rhine!
• De Gaulle was an autocrat. He hated political parties.
• De Gaulle refused to have elections to the European Parliament and persuaded Adenauer to stop these elections too. Because of de Gaulle, Europeans have never had a proper election to the European Parliament.
  

We could also add: De Gaulle kicked the Supreme European Headquarters of NATO out of Paris. French forces left NATO. He despised and ignored the Council of Europe and to gain power, was instrumental in the bloody Algerian war and fierce torture. De Gaulle couldn’t destroy the European Communities, no matter how hard he tried. The best damage he could do was to “chloroform” it for a while. He made sure the democracies of UK, Norway, Denmark and Ireland did not join. He vetoed the applications three times — without asking any advice of his ministers or asking parliament. He preferred Franco’s fascist Spain.
Why is Brussels celebrating 1957? De Gaulle took power in 1957! Politicians admire his style, exploiting the Common Market budget for his own purposes. De Gaulle pillaged European taxes for his own distorted version of the Common Agricultural Policy. It took European money to bribe French voters to keep him in power. Cunning! They would like to do the same. He made sure the Council had doors closed to the public so criticism was muted. Weaker Europeans could be exploited for Gaullist strong-arm policy. Democratic opposition was gagged. That’s why politicians still keep the doors closed today. It’s contrary to the Lisbon treaties that they like. Article 15 TFEU says the Council shall meet in public! Why is the press so passive? Decades to pro-Gaullist dog-training!
Many other politicians today like the idea of doing what they like behind closed doors with the people’s money. Maybe that’s why in 2013 the Council celebrated de Gaulle as if he was a hero of Europe, not its arrogant opponent.
Why don’t honest politicians object to this abuse? It takes both guts, honesty and education. One prime minister told a Davos meeting that the treaty that brought peace in Europe was the Treaty of Rome! Frankly this prime minister, who claimed to be a historian, was either (a) ignorant (b) deceived by EU propaganda or (c) a deceiver.
He wasn’t alone on the stage that day. The Commission first vice president agreed. He comes into the same category. He said: ‘No more paternalism. That was Schuman etc. Very paternalistic people.’
Wrong!
In fact it was de Gaulle who was paternalistic and autocratic. He bossed everyone around, including the Dutch. Schuman created the first stage of Europe’s democratic system, the opposite of paternalistic. Was Mr Timmermans making a slip of the tongue? That’s why I later asked him, in the presence of Europe’s religious leaders:
“Do you think this year’s emphasis on EU60 on the market has been overblown compared with the 1951 beginning of Europe with the Treaty of Paris and reconciliation, and a discussion about European democracy?”
Commission Vice-President Timmermans replied: “May I remind you that the EU started with defence and not internal market or currency. It started with an attempt at defence which was defeated in the French Parliament.”
The facts? In August 1954, after other Member States had ratified it, the French National Assembly voted to suspend the vote on the European Defence Community, CED. What about the Schuman Declaration of 1950 or the Treaty of Paris of April 1951 — which legally defined what the Commission was supposed to do?
Not sure whether this was another slip of the tongue, the next week I posed the same question to the Commission Spokesman. I asked whether the Commission, as supposed guardian of the original treaties, now refused to recognize that the European democratic project had begun with the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 and Europe’s first treaty, the Treaty of Paris signed on 18 April 1951.
The Commission spokesman refused to make any correction to this monumental error about the origin of the EU, the European Community, democracy and the Commission itself.
Lies upon lies and fraud upon fraud! How did this self-deception happen?
From the first, the Community Method and true European step-by-step, consensual democracy was attacked by politicians who wanted to create a pseudo-federal system. Others like the Gaullists just wanted to dominate the other States.
The Community is a system that has potential for the common and open search for truth and common interest for the present and the future.

• Instead of open democracy of the treaties, politicians preferred the Gaullist distortion of secretive power in the Council and Commission.
• Instead of the Community sectoral system (coal, steel, atomic energy, customs) that each required full democratic consent, politicians wanted to control all sectors of the European economy.
• Instead of an impartial, Jury-like Commission that excluded politicians brandishing party cards, the politicians wanted to exclude non-partisan, impartial citizens such as experienced diplomats, engineers, scientists, academics, trade unionists, inventors from becoming members of the Commission.

Schuman and the Founding Fathers realized that the European system cannot be placed in the hands of politicians alone. It must be open to impartial citizens of high moral character, exercising their God-given rights to freedom. Why? Because, as Schuman knew and said, politicians have the tendency not only not to resist the corruption of power but to obscure its very existence. They tend to follow party over public interest, individual interest over collective interest.
That is why two institutions should be politician-free by definition: the European Court of Justice and the European Commission, Europe’s Jury. The third, the Consultative Committees, is instructed to act as impartial representatives of European civil society. That is it should involve professional associations of all sorts, with democratic mandates. The consultative committees, such as the as-yet, non-elected Committee of Regions and the tripartite Economic and Social Committee, (workers, consumers and entrepreneurs’ associations) act as honest witnesses to the state of Europe and the requirements of Europe’s future.
How did politicians and governments set Europe on its downward path? Arrogance. All human beings have a tendency to corrupt. Putting known corrupters in charge of anti-corruption is likely to corrupt the system more rapidly.
Their path to infamy? Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and the failed Constitutional treaties illustrate their process of political and psychological disorder. Is it a coincidence that the initials spell out MANiC?
Europe’s most severe problem of legitimacy arose with the Lisbon Treaty. It extended both their unlawful and unauthorized grasp for power. It reiterated their denial of Referendum NOs. “And Lisbon” turns their acronym to MANIACAL.
The Constitutional Treaty was roundly rejected in referendums. it was hugely unpopular especially in those countries that did not get to vote in a referendum.
This was a big disappointment for the prime ministers (plus the French President!). They wanted to have enhanced limelight. The European Council, known earlier as the European Summit of Heads of State and Government, was invented by de Gaulle in 1961. Its goal, to seduce European leaders with fancy food and allow de Gaulle to be Master of Europe! Today European leaders want to act like little Napoleons with helicopters and snazzy limousines to take them to discussions on global warming!
No sweat for thieves of democracy! They mobilized their plush phantom democracy, the Council of Ministers. That and the European Council (which was not then any form of European legislative institution, nor a real Intergovernmental Committee recognized by treaty) foisted Fake Democracy on the European people by FRAUD and FORCE.
How?
Europe’s Founding Fathers had good, democratic reasons not to create a European Council. It would try to centralize power in secret. When the Constitutional Treaty was rejected, top politicians worried that they may have lost this further lever of central power. The European Council, under the Nice Treaty, could not then even publish a press release. It had no executive power. Its sole responsibility was to meet twice a year and (as the Summit conference for heads of State and government) and submit a report after these two meetings to the European Parliament and a yearly report on progress.
The Community system is built on sectoral responsibilities. This is why the sectoral Councils of Ministers are one of the legal instruments for the European peoples’ legislation. Legislation Proposals by an impartial European Commission are to be transmitted to three institutions only: Council of Ministers (Industry, Fisheries, Agriculture, Science etc), the Parliament and the Consultative Committees. These institutions have to send their amendments if they find faults. Then the Commission decides on the most impartial formulation which it publishes in the Official Journal as Law. That’s how Europe should work. Simply, openly and democratically.
The European Council or the Summit is not involved in this. It cannot dictate.
How did the politicians get round this problem in 2007? They got the Council of Ministers to publish the Press Release or Decree of the European Council. It still had no legal force. Who did they publish it to? Not the public but the national delegations!


The Council press release to the Delegations announced two conspiratorial measures: Money and political Might. The politicians would spend a great deal of European tax-payers’ money on propaganda and press management. Secondly their political might would FORCE the articles of the failed Constitutional Treaty through the parliaments. They would use their national party-controlled majorities against virulent protest and righteous objections of the public. They did not call this a Conspiracy against the people. They called it “Consultations” with fellow politicians!
Thus a small clique of politicians could act totally against the people’s referendum NOs. To oil their way they would need money.

This logo became the official symbol for the “50th anniversary” events during 2007.

Even today it is surprising to read the brazenness of this political ploy. In the same paragraph that showed the strategy to override the referendums, the press release said that money would be necessary for PR enforcement. For that sleight of hand, the European Council proposed that finance be poured into a fraudulent 50th Birthday for Europe, the Treaty of Rome. (Not the European Atomic Energy Treaty, Euratom, mind you, only in practice the European Common Market, the EEC!).
This is what the Council Press Release said about the Constitutional Treaty that lay dead in the water after the French vote of 29 May 2005 and the Dutch vote of 1 June 2005.

Council press release 22 February 2007
“Pursuing reform: the Constitutional Treaty.
As agreed by the European Council at its meeting of June 2006, the Union has followed a two-track approach. It has focused on making best use of the possibilities offered by the existing treaties to deliver concrete results while preparing the ground for continuing the reform process. The presidency (of the Council of Ministers) provided the European Council with an assessment of the consultation with Member States regarding the Constitutional Treaty. The outcome of these consultations will be passed to the German Presidency as part of its preparation for the report to be presented during the first half of 2007. The European Council reaffirms the importance of commemorating the 50th anniversary of the treaties of Rome in order to confirm the importance of the European integration process.”

The chosen path was to avoid any more referendums at all costs. The second decision was to act as if the No referendum results had never happened! Thirdly the rejected treaty would be broken into individual amendments. They would be reassembled and added to articles that could modify the EEC, Treaty of Rome and make it exactly like the Constitutional Treaty.
Huzzah! Hokus Pokus! The Constitutional Treaty lives again in spite of the people!
Thus the politicians made sure their two dozen votes were more important than millions of voters in referendums nixing the Constitutional Treaty. They could make a dead treaty live again, even if the public had stuck a dagger in its heart!
They ordered the civil servants to prepare a book of amendments modifying the Nice treaty (itself a modification of the Amsterdam treaty, itself a modification of the Maastricht treaty, itself a modification of the European Economy Community treaty of Rome.) For the record, not all Member States were ‘allowed’ by politicians to hold referendums on these earlier treaties.
None of these treaties were really legal. The Maastricht treaty had been rejected by the Danes. The Nice treaty was rejected by the Irish. The Constitutional Treaty was rejected by both the French and the Dutch. UK had no referendums on any. Then, when the civil servants had finished their dirty work, the Irish rejected the Lisbon Treaty. Other countries had no chance to have a referendum. Why? The Irish European Commissioner, Charlie MacCreevy, said 95 percent of the European governments would lose a referendum vote on the Lisbon Treaty. The Economist called him “Teller of painful truths.”
The original treaty of Rome , EEC, had a clause which basically said, this treaty does not permit Member States to leave, because all member States agree that the only sure solution for peace and prosperity is to make Europe more democratic. Only a foolish government, if it claimed to be a democracy, would want to leave. That Article 224 of the EEC treaty had become Article 312 of the Nice Treaty.
It was yanked out and replaced by an exit article in the Constitutional Treaty. Referendums in France and the Netherlands rejected this Article 59 and all the Constitutional Treaty. It then became Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. The British had no chance to reject either Article 59 of the Constitutional Treaty or Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. The various UK political parties that in election manifestos promised referendums on European treaties betrayed their promises when in power. They told the public: “No referendum! We know best!”
Why are the British finding it so difficult to leave the EU? Actually it is not too difficult. The European Union was the illegal superstructure added to the European Economic Community. Most of its MANiC changes reduce democracy, or try to. They empower politicians against the people.
The Community system is, however, a different matter. The British in the 1975 referendum agreed to the Community method with an overwhelming majority of 67 percent. It was seen as democratic, and a means to improve the democratic climate of Europe.

• The Community method requires one European election (not 28 national ones) to the European Parliament. That is still in the treaties.
• It requires elections to the Consultative Committees. (That is also still in the treaties.)
• It requires card-carrying politicians to be banned from the European Commission. (That is still in the treaties.)
• It requires the Council of Ministers to be open to the public, just like the parliament, when they ‘consider, discuss and vote’ on any draft legislation. (That is still in the treaties.)

Schuman designed the Community system during the war, when he escaped from Nazi Germany as a prisoner. He told his friends during the war that the future European system would enable postwar Germany to reinforce its democratic tendencies. It would also reduce their proclivity to autocracy as they had experienced under Hitler and others.
He compared it to chaining European States together, so that they would be obliged by their own self-interest to become more democratic. Following the scandals of the Gaullist era with its wine lake, and beef mountains, its corruption in high places and its election bribery, Brussels has succumbed to some pretty low politics.
But it has not failed to deliver positive benefits to its citizens.
The European Community won’t go away. It won’t fail to continue.
Today it is not Germany who wants to leave the European institutions. It is the island that says it has the Mother of Parliaments. Why? Britons smell something rotten wafting over the Channel from Brussels.
Today the Manifest Crisis of democracy is apparent both sides of the Channel and in east, west, central and southern Europe. The solution is simple. Follow the instructions in the original treaties.

• Have elections as required under a single Statute to the European Parliament.
• Ban active politicians from the Commission.
• Open up the Council of Ministers to the public and the press.
• Make the Judges in the Court of Justice democratically responsible.
• Hold elections of properly constituted European professional associations to the Consultative Committees. Stop lobbyists altogether.
• Replace the secretive COREPER and thousands of closed ‘expert’ committees with elected expert members of these democratic organizations.

The outcome of Brexit would be the same as if Germany wished to leave. Schuman said the new favorable climate the Community created would make it totally unpalatable for any country to leave.
In this contest, my bet would be on Schuman, not Brexit.
The conclusion: the only way forward is to make Brussels more democratic and to follow the democratic rules. That too would help the UK where some 30 or so MPs dictate the hard Brexit policy of what was supposed to be an advisory referendum.
Secondly, truth is the best policy.

Brexit Papers: Who's in charge of Europe's Information? the Chickens or the Fox?

Who’s in charge of Europe’s Hen House?

The final legal deadline for the European Commission to provide the Brexit Papers was Thursday 16 November 2017. That day passed without any sign of life from the Commission. Not one page arrived. Nor was any message received. No apology.
Nothing arrived on Friday 17 November. Before the end of work, I therefore wrote to the Commission Secretariat-General about this. The reason for the delay was made clear in the reply.
Politics.
Apparently, for the Commission, politics overrules legal obligations. The letter says the Commission “hierarchy” is higher than the law!
The Secretary General’s office wrote that:

“The extended time limit expired on 16 November 2017.
We have finalised the assessment of your application. However, as our reply still requires the approval of our hierarchy, we will not be able to respond within the extended time limit.
I regret this additional delay and sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.”

The present “political Commission” gives itself political freedom to ignore legal deadlines. It is strict on the legal obligations when it comes to the general public. They must hold to these deadlines. Otherwise the tax-paying public gets its wrist slapped. No information for you, whatever the Commission’s legal obligation to publish public information. You want information? Then start the months-long request all over again! My request was first lodged in August.
One law for the fox, another for the hens in the hen house.
Robert Schuman, who launched the idea of the European Community on 9 May 1950, said the Commission should be impartial. It should not be political. It should not listen to lobbyists. And it should have an open information policy. The United Nations sought his advice about setting up an information network that was free of Fake News and Disinformation. Remember this was the time of the Cold War.
Early last year, well before the 23 June Referendum, in a freedom of information request a member of the public, Mr Chris Harris, requested the pre-Brexit background papers. These are documents of major public interest. The Commission should have been releasing them in a continual publishing cycle. It should be obliged to publish regardless of Freedom of Information requests.

• It is the public that is paying for the research.
• It is the public’s interest at stake in the decision.
• It is the duty of the Commission to have the public educated with fair, unbiased information before they make any decision regarding European Communities that need to be taken.

People should know the consequences of Brexit before the Referendum, Mr Chris Harris argued. He was fobbed off. The Commission brandished its two powerful weapons, legal complication and time-wasting. The latter is facilitated by the strict 15-day deadlines imposed in the EC Regulation 1049/2001.
Mr Harris made clear the importance of this request and the damage of the Commission’s negative and tardy attitude to releasing information:

“There is/was (as the referendum has now taken place) an over-riding public interest in releasing the documents. It had been 40+ years since the British public were given the opportunity to say whether they wanted to be involved in the EU project, a whole generation never voted for it in the first place. They also have the right to know, if they vote yes, on what terms they will stay in the union.”

The Commission had set up a UK Referendum Task Force (UKTF) under one of its most eminent lawyers and former Commission chief Spokesman, Jonathan Faull. The Commission refused to provide any information, even though the writer, Mr Harris, had replied inside the given time. His error? He did not add the magic words ‘I am requesting a review‘ after the first refusal of the Commission! (A refusal is normal Commission practice.)
However, Mr Harris had pointed out that the Commission had not replied to all his questions in their first reply. How then was he to ask for a review when the Commission had not given the answers he could appeal against!?
The Commission dismissed his information request. It replied:

“The Commission regrets not being able to derogate from the compulsory deadlines laid down in Article 7(2) of Regulation 1049/2001, as it is bound to treat all applications for access to documents according to the same rules so as to ensure equal treatment of those applications.”

We can all envisage the tears of of the Commission shed, not being able to supply the necessary information before the 23 June 2016 referendum !! Tears of joy. Phew! we got out of a political row with the UK government and some nasty headlines in the British press! They may have accused the Commission of explaining the difficulties that Brexit would cause, the cost of the Brexit bill, the assault on Citizens’ rights and the impossibility of having a customs border in Northern Ireland which was not a border.
Now the Commission is faced with years of extra bureaucracy in the so-called Brexit negotiations. It has already cost untold sums to industries, anxieties to millions of EU and UK citizens and raucous laughter among EU’s competitors at what they say is the stupidest decision any country has made.
And Horror of Horrors! it may have raised the deadly question about NOT having a referendum on Lisbon Treaty. In their manifestos political parties promised referendums. In office each UK Government successively refused referendums on the democracy-changing treaties from Maastricht to Lisbon.
As for Article 50, it is triply dead. What use are “negotiations” on an Article in a treaty whose validity is highly dubious? This is a time bomb for the future, well beyond the present negotiation farce. The Irish national referendums rejected it. British polls rejected it.
The UK governments had refused to have a referendum to validate the post-EEC treaties. The same article, then called Article 59, had been roundly rejected by the French and Dutch referendums when it first saw life in the Constitutional Treaty. So how on earth could a rejected article be legally the basis for a non-binding Brexit referendum??
More than the stupidest decision, the Referendum question itself was one of the most illegal and ill-thought of operations in modern history. Surely a democracy should have as its first priority to make sure that any Community of Democracies is really democratic?
The closed-door Councils of Politicians have stolen the democracy of 500 million people. Whoever heard of a closed door democracy?
Ask the North Koreans!

1. J'ACCUSE! Brexit is THEFT.

J’ACCUSE was the title of a book written by a patriotic German during World War One. It was published in 1915 in Switzerland. It was anonymous to protect the author’s life. He exposed the hypocrisy of the German leaders who called on their fellow citizens for patriotic solidarity for their act of illegal war.
After the Germans invaded Belgium without real motive, their soldiers were attacked by ordinary Belgian citizens — a populist revolt at the outrage. Germans then slaughtered the civilian population. Cardinal Mercier addressed the people at Christmas 1914 listing the many priests who were shot, the hundreds of civilians shot or burnt, included old people and children.
The German justification? The law of war!
Rubbish said, lawyer Richard Grelling (for he it was who wrote the book). Might does not make Right. THEFT is absolutely wrong.
The Belgian people were defending their homes and country against armed invaders who despised Belgian neutrality. It is two-faced hypocrisy for the Kaiser’s army to steal the Belgian homeland by brutal force. It is an evil act to kill those Belgians who said ‘No you don’t!’ On the contrary THEFT is quite understandable by universal values. Not just in Belgium but everywhere. Should William Tell be burnt for defending his Swiss home against Habsburg thieving fingers?
Grelling thus emphasized the primacy of moral law over rationalizations of force.
The first stage of this condemnation was theft. That was clear to cool heads on all sides, even Germans. Killing came next. The first failure of the Germans was to condemn their own invasion of Belgium.
The same arrogance applies today to Brussels. Those who say they are “in power” in Brussels try to make up universal rules. Brussels politocrats spout disinformation. They make up the rules as they go — to their own advantage.
The Brussels politburo has already lost the argument for universal values and truth. It may not have sunk into their skulls. They may try to ignore it. They may think that the “itch” of their bad conscience may go away with time. It is not a physical itch. And it won’t go away.
Example: what did they say about Brexit? Where was the theft?
On 24 June 2016, four EU presidents issued a statement about early UK referendum results. They had fallen on their ears a few short hours earlier. Here’s what they said:

“We now expect the United Kingdom government to give effect to this decision of the British people as soon as possible, however painful that process may be. Any delay would unnecessarily prolong uncertainty. We have rules to deal with this in an orderly way.”

Here’s what I wrote the same day repeating what I wrote two years earlier. The main problem was the earlier THEFT of European democracy. De Gaulle tried to expunge the lucid light of European democracy. Schuman and Europe’s Founding Fathers said the Councils, committees and parliament should all be OPEN to the public and elected on a European basis.
Then came the THEFT of Schuman’s honor as the Father of European Democracy. De Gaulle refused to recognize Robert Schuman’s office as President of the European Parliament on 19 March 1958. In other States Schuman was treated like a Head of State. Once Schuman died in 1963 and other leaders lost their democratic guts, the Commission and the Council become anti-democratic, closed door organizations.
De Gaulle forbade Adenauer, Jean Monnet, former French prime ministers and others to attend his funeral. Weak-kneed politicians acquiesced to the line of French Foreign Minister Couve de Murville and the Gaullists who wanted to destroy the Community system. Gaullists threatened, then boycotted the institutions like the Council and Parliament in the “Empty Chair” crisis. Europeans fought for their democratic rights, good French democrats leading them. De Gaulle lost that fight. After riots and national paralysis, a French referendum kicked him out in 1969. He was replaced as President of the Republic by Alain Poher, formerly Schuman’s chief of staff.
The flame of Democracy is still STOLEN. Politicians love meeting secretly. Light of open democracy, required by the treaties, is still shut out of the councils and committees. Brussels today is run by a neo-Gaullist politburo. It still has more in common to the politiburos of the Soviet system. Robert Schuman denounced these “People’s Democracies” as counterfeit democracies.
Their characteristics ?

• They did not allow free and open, ideological debate in society — for example about Communist atheism vs Europe’s Judeo-Christian heritage. Today politicians spout the slogan of Islam as a “religion of peace“. That title belonged to Christianity until 2001. Then President George W Bush first misappropriated the term — believe it or not — after the jihadi attack on the NY Twin Towers, the Pentagon and Washington. Why? Islam means submission, surrender or subjection in Arabic, not peace The verb is directed to a god situated in Mecca called Allah, not the Judeo-Christian God. (Oxford Dictionary: islam, submission from aslama, resign oneself). Submission is what a Politburo wants too. All voters who disagree are called “populists”!
• A Politburo rules. It refuses to justify its base ethical standards. No free worker agrees to the dictatorship of the workers. Nor do today’s free citizens agree to the “Democratic Deficit”.
• The politburo members were the self-elected super-citizens. The means to attain this status as the elite was party membership. Today the Commission is controlled the same way, by party cronies. Only members holding specific party cards are admitted (totally contrary to the oath of office they make). Other voices are excluded as “popularism”. Ordinary citizens who usually have no party membership are excluded. They amount to 98 percent of the population!
• In secret sessions, party apparatchiks decide what is good for the people.

Today all major decisions of the Brussels elite take place in secret. What do the treaties say? All meetings should be open to the public and the press. The USSR, DDR, North Korea and the European Council are prime examples of the same fake democracy. Great company!
And what happens when the people raise their voice in a referendum? What do the Brussels politocrats do then? Well, they simply go into their councils, close the doors and tell us if the Referendum was recognized by them or not!
What THEFT!
A few dozen super-citizens go into closed session and tell four hundred million democratic voters if they are right or wrong! And then they come out and tell whopping lies. You can, like the audience of Grelling’s book, decide for yourself what is morally right and wrong.
Let’s take an example and analyze it. It shows exactly what democrats are up against. Compare what the judges in British democracy say about referendums and what the so-called guardians of European democracy in Brussels opine.
First the timing. Within a couple of hours of the first results of the UK referendum being announced — before the final published result! — on 24 June 2016, FOUR presidents of the EU (Juncker, Tusk, Schulz and Rutte) issued an official Statement saying:

“We now expect the United Kingdom government to give effect to this decision of the British people as soon as possible, however painful that process may be. Any delay would unnecessarily prolong uncertainty. We have rules to deal with this in an orderly way….”

Weren’t they efficient? Weren’t they quick? Didn’t they also shoot from the mouth a little bit too fast? Weren’t they a bit rash? Weren’t they also WRONG?
In fact the UK referendum was advisory. It was totally out of order for anyone to pronounce on the matter — least of all, Brussels.
This was obviously going be a decision affecting the destiny of 500 million citizens. Some of the presidents had not slept much that night. It would be instructive to hear their arguments that led to the press release. Would it include: “Let’s get rid of the British while we can. They are always awkward about Democracy!” Why were the public and press video cameras excluded from their early morning deliberations? Were the Four above democracy? Were they higher than UK and ECJ judges?
For all democratic Europeans this Four Presidents’ Decree is an affront to the supposed impartiality of all four institutions (Commission, European Council, Council of Ministers and Parliament). It was also legally WRONG! Do they have an excuse? NO. The four institutions are stuffed with lawyers. Many were British lawyers, knowing their Constitution.
Meanwhile in the UK the slower, surer process of law exposed the Decree, for what it was. CONSTITUTIONAL THEFT!
The High Court in its judgement on Miller vs HMG paragraph 106 said:

‘… a referendum on any topic can only be advisory for the lawmakers in Parliament unless very clear language to the contrary is used in the referendum legislation in question. No such language is used in the 2015 Referendum Act.’ The referendum imposed no mandatory action.

The UK Supreme Court in its judgement paragraphs 119 to 125 re-affirmed that the Referendum was advisory!

“(124) Thus the referendum of 2016 did not change the law in a way which would allow ministers to withdraw the United Kingdom from the European Union without legislation. (125) … because of the sovereignty of Parliament, referendums cannot be legally binding in the UK, and are therefore advisory. …(12th Report 2009-10, House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution). “

Did the four presidents apologize for their fierce folly? Not a word.
In Schuman’s real democracy European decisions must be agreed by governments, by regions, by duly elected economic and social committees and parliament. The UK referendum was simply reaffirming the major problem: Brussels can no longer be considered to be democratic, open, fair or just. The European Union, as distinct from the European Communities which UK citizens in 1975 approved by a large, legal referendum majority, is illegitimate. It had never been agreed by the people.
I accuse the Brussels politocrats of the THEFT of Schuman’s real democracy. They have substituted a fraud.

Why the Brexit Papers are important for Democracy

On 16 November the public could be able to read the secret documents on Brexit.

This is vitally important — not just for Britons. It is essential for European Democracy.

Brexit goes far beyond the obvious. What is obvious is that some Europeans living in UK fear that after Brexit they may be lose their jobs, their residency rights, their rights to travel freely and their health care. The big question for Europe is not about residency or social services or Ireland. Nor is it about trade.

The crux is: Who rules? Who decides on everyday matters? Do Europeans accept politicians deciding their future unaccountably behind closed doors.

The core issue is DEMOCRACY. This year politicians created a Fake News campaign about the 1957 birthday of the European Community called 60Rome. Not true! Schuman created the basis for Freedom and Democracy in 1951.

Robert Schuman announced the European Community system on 9 May 1950 as the most responsive and responsible democratic system. Instead of realizing its open, democratic potential, de Gaulle and succeeding politicians created a closed-door autocracy in the Councils.

From 1973 on British governments went along with this political corruption. It brought beef mountains, wine lakes and other scams such as airports and motorways with no traffic. Then the politicians agreed to change the European Community treaty system itself into an unaccountable European Union.

For nearly twenty years British politicians promised that these major changes to Europe’s governance in the Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice, Constitutional and Lisbon treaties would each be confirmed in a Referendum.

Many referendums were promised. None materialized.

Then in 2015 the UK government proposed a referendum, not on whether the UK people should recognize these treaties, but whether they should leave the EU on the basis of an unconfirmed, undemocratic treaty!

WHAAAAT!

That’s upside-down logic. First you have to agree to a treaty before you can apply it. The addled thinking went further after the 24 June 2016 results came out. PM Cameron resigned.

In chronic upside-down logic both the UK government said it would exit the EU. Four Brussels presidents insisted within hours of the result that an advisory referendum must be carried out immediately ‘however painful that process may be‘ upon 500 million citizens!

Wrong! No government is empowered to act on an advisory referendum.

The power of the government comes from the people. The people said governance is upside down here.

Think! Is a referendum a legal instrument? Is it recognized legally by Brussels and London?

If the advisory, non-binding referendum for Article 50 mandates UK government action to leave an undemocratic, overly bureaucratic EU, then a referendum must be first conducted to see if Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is valid.

If a referendum is not necessary for validating the Lisbon Treaty, then the 23 June 2016 referendum confers no powers on UK governments to leave. Any result just says: This is a stupid, illogical and unlawful procedure. The half-and-half (48.1/ 52.9%) result on 23 June says the same thing: what a silly, irresponsible government Britons have.

Brussels is also guilt of this pick-and-chose governance. When democracies voted against treaties, Brussels said the legally binding referendum NO votes did not apply.

• Maastricht: rejected by Denmark.
• Nice: rejected by Ireland
• Euro: rejected by Denmark, Sweden.
• Constitutional Treaty: rejected by France, the Netherlands
• Referendums in other States, Czechia, Denmark, Ireland, Poland, Portugal UK were cancelled.
• Then, contrary to all honest government, the quasi-totality of this failed and rejected Constitutional treaty was forced through by States and passed by autocratic party systems. Even the European Parliament passed it without a text being available. In fact they refused to have the text of the treaty they voted on!

The implications of lack of honesty and democracy are serious for all Europeans. If UK is leaving because the Brussels system is undemocratic or anti-democratic, will the absence of UK make it any more honest and fair? Europe will be divided by two systems, UK and EU, both with declining standards of democracy and honesty. Democracies like Switzerland, Norway, Iceland will stay clear away — for good reason! They know what a referendum means.

The European Community’s foundational principle is the Freedom of Citizens to choose. Today it is obvious that both Nation State and the Brussels system fail to colour the democratic litmus paper. All States — whether Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Poland, national regions like Scotland and Catalonia or the smaller States — are showing the nationalistic strain as Brussels tries to impose its autocratic will against voters. Why? because the Brussels politicians refuse to implement Schuman’s design for an elected parliament and committees for economic, social and regional policy.

What do politicians and bureaucrats discuss when they close the doors on the public cameras? Are politicians more interested in their careers than how they change, reduce or eliminate citizen rights? What sort of arrangement or deals are being done about taxpayers’ money that the taxpayer knows nothing about? What sort of crackpot schemes are being envisaged that will endanger the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland?

And how on earth did democratic Europe get into this tragi-comedy or farce?

Other issues may come to light. Are the so-called negotiators really competent?

As Robert Schuman said: Government should be at the service of the people and act in agreement with the people. How can it be democratic if the people are kept in ignorance about the doings in the dark of their so-called representatives?

In August I therefore requested that the European Commission supply all the Brexit papers as they were of primary concern to the public, the press and to all individual citizens. As expected the Commission sent a registered letter on 13 September refusing any documents beyond the position papers they had already released. The Freedom of Information Regulation 1049/2001 allows an appeal to be placed. My reply was sent on 2 October. It refutes the grounds given by the Commission, maintaining that all the documents are public information. It is imperative that all documents should be disclosed.

On 24 October I received from the Commission a notice that they cannot reply on the due date to my Freedom of Information Request for the Brexit papers. They are notifying that they are applying an extension of 15 working days until 16 November under article 8 of 1049/2001.

They say:
“we have not yet been able to gather all the elements we need to carry out a full analysis of your request in order to take a final decision and, therefore, we are not in a position to reply to your confirmatory request within the prescribed time limit expiring 24 October 2017.”

It appeals to Article 8.2 of the Freedom of Information Regulation to extend the deadline. This paragraph says:

8.2. In exceptional cases, for example in the event of an

application relating to a very long document or to a very large

number of documents, the time limit provided for in paragraph

1 may be extended by 15 working days, provided that the

applicant is notified in advance and that detailed reasons are

given.

Are the Conservatives more interested in keeping their party together than real democracy? Is Brexit merely a strategy to hold a minority party in power? Are the present European institutions more interested in maintaining their closed-door system in violation of the treaties than serving citizens?

On 16 November we may get the answer.

Freedom of Information request to burst the Brexit Bubble!

Bizarre! 
Brexit is based on an advisory referendum on a bizarre question, not one that legally requires UK government action.  

Doubly bizarre!  
UK's exit from the EU is based on the Lisbon  Treaty -- a treaty that the UK refused to submit to a referendum. Ireland rejected it in a Referendum.

Triply Bizarre. The Lisbon Treaty is identical with the Constitutional Treaty that was rejected by the French and Dutch referendums. Other countries, including UK, were not allowed to have a referendum!

What on earth is going on with 'European Democracy'?? Are the 'Brexit negotiations' being conducted in the democratic interest of the European people? 

In August 2017, I wrote to the European Commission requesting under the Freedom of Information Regulation the release of all papers on Brexit. The public is being spoon-fed minute amounts of information about what is being negotiated between the European Commission and the UK Government. They are not being told WHY!

It is extremely serious for everyone's future. The style of these so-called negotiations precludes the public from understanding the main issues. Are they about trade, red tape or democratic control of a bloated, neo-Gaullist bureaucracy? Justice is far more important. The European Commission was originally called the Honest Broker of Europe. Now it calls itself the political Commission.

These negotiations hide the major issues about the lack of real democracy in Brussels and the distorted democracy that rules in the UK under the slogan, Brexit at any price. 

My request for Brexit information was totally refused by the Commission. Under the Freedom of Information Regulation 1049/2001 I am able to request a review by the Commission (!) of their decision to refuse information. 

The refusal gave three reasons. 1. the Commission has created a "tailor-made process of transparency" which it is applying. 2. Objections relative to the secrecy of negotiations and 3. to matters of economic and financial sensitivity.

This is my reply letter.

To the Deputy Chief Brexit Negotiator,

Dear Ms Weyand,

Many thanks for your letter of 13 September 2017 in reply to my request for all documents and working papers of the UK Brexit talks and discussions.

In accordance with Regulation 1049/2001, I am hereby asking for a review of the grounds that you give for refusing any and all papers other than position papers and agendas etc already released. I am also asking for all documents that are being currently generated as the talks proceed as a continuous process.

A. ‘Tailor made transparency’ is another term for cover-up.

1. Censorship by definition. In your reply you first state that the European Commission has adopted a “tailor-made approach to transparency.” (your bold text) That is precisely the point to which I and many others object. It is not logically or legally possible to have maximum transparency and then withhold documents by a self-serving, restriction. Tailor-making restrictions by and for Commission officials must censor and hide documents from the legal principals.

2. Against interests of free citizens. This procedure is in direct violation to the democratic principles of the Community Method, freedom of information for free citizens, as enunciated by RobertSchuman and the Founding Fathers.

3. Not authorized by principals. Who are the legal principals? Let me put it simply in the terms that the European Commission, Council and Parliament have used many times, that of a divorce. In a marital divorce, the man and the woman are free to choose their lawyers to represent their interests on the settlement in a Court before an impartial judge. A divorce case involves rights, children, property and responsibilities.

If the lawyers were corrupt and wanted to ban the man and woman from their discussions, that would clearly be unfair, not to say, illegal. If the lawyers wanted to come to a division of goods and property, sort out rights etc without a judge being present, that too would be both unjust and illegal. It would not stand up an instance once it was brought before an appeal Court. If the lawyers were more interested in what they could gain in an operation to the detriment and financial loss of the divorcing couple, that would be a dereliction of duty. It would be farcical theatre. For the couple it would involve robbery of their human rights, money and interests.

4. Denies pre-talk discovery. Robbery of facts and smothering of interests are precisely what the EU institutions and the UK government are undertaking at the moment. A tailor-made approach to transparency by biased and unauthorized officials is an instrument in illegality and cover-up. It denies discovery and analysis by the legal principals. Many areas need legal investigation before Brexit talks start and can be solidly structured.

5. Citizens’ rights are not negotiable. The couple seeking the divorce are the British and European publics. More than 500 million people are being divorced, according to the Article 50 process. It is their interests, property and rights that are at stake. Article 50 gives no authorization for secret negotiations or the censorship of documents by the Commission’s so-called ‘tailor-made approach.’ This latter method is unjust as it blocks and silences normal civil procedure. As indicated below, the public have a number of pre-negotiation (pre-trial) issues that must be clarified, before any result can be legally binding.   

6. Only open debate and open documents are acceptable. The present set-up is unacceptable and all papers must be released.

B. The EU and the UK government are not the real negotiating partners.

1. No authority has been cited to construct a ‘tailor-made’ system to censor and restrict information. The information belongs to the people.

Brexit concerns more than 500 million citizens. It does not just PRIMARILY involve the European Commission (acting for the institutions) and the Government of the United Kingdom. Both these parties have their own partisan positions which do not necessarily, and in practice, coincide with the interests of the citizens.

2. The EU institutions do not have full public confidence or trust.

For example the European Union must be concerned with its institutional interests and its practice. Much of these interests are subject to public criticism on grounds of unauthorized secrecy and the “democratic deficit”. The institutions have lost public trust continually in the way the Commission is chosen, contrary to Community law and original customary practice. The result? The turnout of the public in European Parliamentary elections has declined continuously since the post-Maastricht elections. The rise of what the Commission calls ‘nationalist’ or ‘popularist’ movements and parties indicate that the institutions are in crisis. It has lowest ratings since the early days of the European Community.

3. The UK Government, for reasons discussed below, lacks public support.

Article 50 requires that the UK fulfill all its ‘constitutional requirements’ before Brexit. This requires ensuring the rights of national regions, regional parliaments, minorities, and many other issues including the transitory arrangements for some 14,000 legal instruments by democratic means and overall economic stability. The conduct of the Referendum debate, the status of Euratom which was not mentioned in the debate, and the viability of referendums in law, are just some of the issues still raising constitutional questions. For these I would direct you to my book: Brexit and the British Vision for Europe, ISBN 9781326780869.

4. Both the so-called ‘negotiating parties’ are prejudiced against their clients, the public.

4.a The EU institutions.

The European Commission, the European Council and the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament are prejudiced and antagonistic to the UK’s remaining a member of the EU.

This lack of impartiality can be demonstrated by many statements. It would be tiresome to list them all. For example, take their reaction to the Referendum itself. It was a consultative, non-binding referendum on the question of staying in or leaving the EU (not the European Community or Euratom).

The non-binding and consultative nature of the referendum were known in advance and publicized during the Referendum campaign. The non-binding nature was later confirmed – not only in the High Court of England and Wales but in the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. You can find the judgements of these two Courts of Justice, together with the presentations of the parties, in my book:  Brexit, Miller and Henry VIII. ISBN: 9781365727412. I would refer you to paragraph 105 to 108 on in the High Court judgement and paragraphs 116 on in the UK Supreme Court judgement.

It was with some shock among journalists that immediately after the first results from the 23 June 2016 Referendum, the presidents of the four EU institutions presented themselves at 10 am at the Commission Press Room to pronounce. They issued a joint statement. It said UK must leave the EU “as soon as possible, however painful that process may be.” http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/06/24-joint-statement-uk-referendum/

Yet 63 percent of British electors had either not voted or voted to remain.  The UK Government had no authority to proceed immediately. Nor had the EU institutions any right to react so negatively or absolutely to an unclear outcome.  Mr Cameron had resigned his office at 8.15 that morning! Whom were the four officials addressing? He said the UK needed ‘fresh leadership’ to deal with the non-binding referendum outcome involving a small majority, splitting the country in half and posing constitutional problems. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/24/david-cameron-resigns-after-uk-votes-to-leave-european-union

To add insult to illegality the four EU presidents in their 10 am statement insisted on a quick Brexit, regardless of the uncertain UK governmental situation and nearly a year before any Article 50 letter was received: ‘We have rules to deal with this in an orderly way.’ In fact the status of Article 50 in this regard is anything but clear.

A second example of many would be the SpitzenKandidat system. This non-treaty device was used to elect Mr Juncker – when the democratically elected British Prime Minister David Cameron had said ‘Mr Juncker is ‘the wrong man’ for the job. Who was Mr Juncker elected by? Just 382 politician/electors of 800 of the EPP. No ballot in all the EU had Mr Juncker’s name on it. No Commission ballot existed.  

The treaties say that the Commission must be impartial and hence a partisan politician is automatically ruled out by law.

A further indication of prejudice is the fact that Mr Juncker’s telephone calls could be seen as an important factor in the resignation of Mr Cameron, an elected Prime Minister. His remarks that preceded the statement of the four presidents were addressed to a country with no effective government.

4b. UK Government is a prejudicial party too.

When Mr Cameron resigned, the Conservative Party had to choose a new leader. This was not done until the autumn. Then Mrs Theresa May called a General Election. She ended up with a minority of votes in the House of Common. She hoped to be sustained by the votes of another party, the DUP of Northern Ireland. Conclusion? The public did not support her policy.

It was Mrs May who used the Conservative Party’s earlier majority to authorize her to write the Article 50 letter to Brussels. However her authority to do so was undermined by the later General Election. Critics say that her hard Brexit policy is a means only to hold the Conservative party together, and pro-Brexit faction within it, are a minority within a minority.

One of many other examples of lack of impartiality that could be cited is the UK Government’s attitude to UK citizens living on the Continent. They were not allowed to vote in the Referendum although their vital interests were involved. There is no guarantee that the present Government will act rigorously to assure these British citizens get a fair deal.

Another, even more serious indicator of undemocratic activity is that the UK governments, since the time of the Maastricht Treaty 1992 to Lisbon, have refused to organize confirmatory referendums to assure treaties’ legality. Thus the Lisbon Treaty has not been confirmed as the acting treaty by referendum. Then they acted one-sidedly and in a prejudicial, partisan way on the advisory referendum of 23 June 2016 to withdraw without reference to Parliament or public debate. Two Courts ruled against them.

5. Conclusion:  

The citizens of the UK and EU-27 are the primary parties in the dispute. They have right for the full disclosure of any and all documents involved in the Article 50 or Brexit process.

Both of the so-called negotiating parties, EU institutions and UK government, have lost public confidence in their impartiality. They do not have public trust.

Both parties have shown themselves prejudicial against public interests.

Both parties ignore calls for fairness.

No meaningful negotiation can take place for the public by parties who are not trusted by the public and who refuse to submit all working documents to the public.

The concept of censoring by a ‘tailor-made’, unauthorized committee of unnamed officials is untenable in any democracy.

Who is the ‘tailor’?

Who decides the pattern or framework for censorship?

Who is able to make the cuts?

Who is involved in stitching up a ‘package deal’ behind closed doors?

Is the pattern they are using one that suits these bodies only and does not involve substantive public issues, such as:

Why the Commission ignored previous referendums that were unfavorable to it,

Why the Lisbon Treaty is identical with the Constitutional Treaty which was rejected by referendums,

Why and how was the Lisbon Treaty and its Article 50, after being rejected by the Irish in a Referendum, mysteriously deemed legal with no public discussion?

What is the status of nuclear proliferation security under Euratom? Euratom has its article 208 which forbids exit for these very reasons.

A ‘tailor-made’ deal is for the public nothing more than a cover-up.

The public is PRIMARILY the main party in the dispute – called a divorce. They have the Primary Right to the documents about what is being discussed either for their enhanced rights in the Community system or against those existing rights to minimize or reduce them. The public and all concerned citizens have the right to have the information about the talks, either directly by video link or have all the working documents plus the position papers.

The two other parties, the EU institutions and the UK government, may not like this. They might wish to carve up in private mutually acceptable positions to the prejudice of the public. They may wish to tailor the information flow to make this easier for them to manage the information and control the PR. That is not the point.  They have no right or legal authority to do so.

The public rights include safeguarding their right to information against any closed door corruption.

This transparency issue goes far beyond the stipulations of the treaties which say that all matters must be treated as openly as possible. The EU institutions must understand that ‘open’ in this case means open to video cameras and public analysis.

The issue goes beyond all the treaties because it is about the right of free people to have free information about their destiny and how others who call themselves representatives are manipulating information to the detriment of elementary rights of Freedom.

THIS IS NOT A SMALL MATTER OF A MINOR COMMITTEE WHERE OFFICIALS WITHOLD DOCUMENTS. IT INVOLVES – AS ROBERT SCHUMAN SAID ON 9 MAY 1950 – THE DEMOCRATIC DESTINY OF THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT.

C. Riposte to other exception clauses

1. Article 4.3 of Regulation 1049/2001.

You write that the disclosure of working documents and internal minutes is prevented by the exception to the right of access laid down in Article 4(3) (protection of the decision-making process).

This reads: 4.3. Access to a document, drawn up by an institution for internal use or received by an institution, which relates to a matter where the decision has not been taken by the institution, shall be refused if disclosure of the document would seriously undermine the institution's decision-making process, unless there is an overriding public interest in disclosure.

The exception of Article 4.3 about this ‘negotiating process’ that you mention is null and void for the reasons detailed above and below. The subject of rights being curtailed in secret excludes its use. The first part of the talks is about ‘divorce’. It deals with the rights of citizens. Only after the divorce can trade matters be discussed.

A fundamental democratic right is to be informed. This is an absolute right. It is recognized by representative governments. Freedom to Information is not doled out by democratic governments, only autocracies. Government is obliged by the people to recognize their right to information. (Article 10 of the Convention of Human Rights, articles 8-11 of the EU Charter).

The so-called negotiating parties have no right to limit this information. Nor is it the function of the EU or government to decide how much information about changing citizen rights it will deign to release to the public. It is the public that judges the EU and the governments about whether they are remiss or not in their functions of civil servants.

Neither the EU Institutions nor the Government of the UK has the full and undivided support of the British or European public. They cannot act fully in its name.

 It is therefore of major importance and overriding interest of the public to have all information being discussed. Otherwise the public will be faced with a negotiated fait accompli from two groups of officials that lack public confidence. They will therefore be faced with the option to take further legal action for the dereliction of duty of the two groups involved.

2. Climate of public trust has already been lost

You say that the ‘negotiations on the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union requires a climate of mutual trust between both sides.’  But neither side has the full trust of the public. There is concern at what is NOT being discussed, excluded by mutual agreement of the EU and UK government against the public.

Whatever the outcome, trust has already been the first casualty. The public cannot properly judge the value of a pig in a poke. That is what in effect the ‘negotiations’ are between two parties that lack public trust. Citizens cannot see what is supposedly being done in their name, and without their acquiescence.  

3. The three areas of talks require openness, not secrecy
The three areas of the present discussion have been defined without public intervention. But as they stand they are all matters that require openness: rights of residence and social security, the Irish single market and travel area and the accountancy of the amounts the UK will pay to settle up its bills and commitments.

The latter is purely an accountancy problem based on legal obligations. The money involved is tax-payers’ money. The final figures and the discussion should be without dispute by anyone, as much as a tax bill of an individual or a company should be fixed and settled by accountancy principles. There is therefore no reason to apply Article 4.3 to any of the main areas defined for the divorce discussions.  

There are a number of other areas such as Euratom, JET and generally governance issues that cannot be restricted by article 4.3. They are issues were the legislation has to be continued beyond Brexit. Public ventilation of the issues is to the advantage of all. It will avoid a slew of Court cases if the ‘negotiators’ get it wrong.

4. Objections under Article 4.1

You say that ‘disclosure of documents is ‘prevented by … Article 4 (1)(a), fourth indent (protection of the financial, monetary or economic policy of the Union or a Member State) and Article 4(1) (b) (protection of the privacy and the integrity of the individuals).’

This article reads:

4.1. The institutions shall refuse access to a document where

disclosure would undermine the protection of:

(a) the public interest as regards:

— public security,

— defence and military matters,

— international relations,

— the financial, monetary or economic policy of the

Community or a Member State;

(b) privacy and the integrity of the individual, in particular in accordance with Community legislation regarding the protection of personal data.

The same counter-arguments apply to dismiss the claim. None of these restrictions apply to universal rights and privileges of UK citizens and EU-27 citizens. They do not involve individuals whose data has to be protected. The money involved is tax-payers’ money.  That alone removes the requirement of secrecy.

The request is about the divorce proceedings not the negotiations afterwards about a new commercial partnership and a new trading relationship.  The subjects being discussed at the moment are:

·         Residential and social rights of EU-27 citizens in the UK and UK citizens in EU27.

·         Irish border, single market problems,

·         Financial payments.

  There are several other issues of equal or greater importance that the negotiating parties have refused to deal with. That underlines the dangers for the citizens of leaving the EU and the UK government the sole right to define what the issues for the citizens really are. So far the experiment has failed. The dangers for the citizen and future democratic standards both for the UK and the EU have been increased.

The objection raised is trying to confound the two phases. The first phase must have open discussion and open paper work.

A tailor-made restriction on documents is by definition a cover-up. I urgently demand that a review of the Commission’s policy be made. All documents relevant to Brexit must be released and negotiations held in a way that satisfies open democracy, worthy of European democratic institutions.

Yours sincerely,

David H Price

SchumanProject

eurDemocracy