Eretz4: The EU corruptly underwrites the Palestinian Mafia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

19. Europe's 'US Ambassador' spat between Council and Commission

An unsightly dispute has broken out about the nomination of the "Ambassador" of the European Union to the United States of America. It is likely to lead to further turf wars between the Commission and the Council of Ministers. Some foreign ministers are annoyed that they were not given a say-so in the nomination.

The new EU representative is the former chief of staff to Commission President Barroso. About a decade ago an earlier dispute between Commissioner Chris Patten (responsible for external relations policy) and Council of Ministers Secretary General Javier Solana became very public. It is not resolved by the Lisbon Treaty fudge. The dispute between the Commission and the Council, dating from de Gaulle's nationalistic attempt to distort and grab the powers of the Council, cannot be resolved by the Lisbon Treaty. Why? Because it tries to do so by the illogicalities of a shared function in two supposedly independent institutions. Baroness Ashton is vice president of the Commission and also at the Council, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Thus the power struggle dating from the 1960s is now continuing at a different more expensive and embarrassing level for all the world to see.

It is not so much about personalities or even about institutions. It is about power politics or a more just, democratic and equitable way to conduct the policies of some 500 million Europeans. It is about two systems: power politics now based on a cartel or Community democracy. At the core is the unresolved question of whether the EU should be a supranational Community system as envisaged by Monnet and Schuman or an intergovernmental system run autocratically by the ministers in a secretive Council -- still with little democratic oversight. This is really warmed-over Gaullism, that is, removing democratic checks and balances. It turns all public posts into party patronage and political nepotism.

For example, the Council decided by itself without any public mandate that the Members of the Commission should all be national representatives and they should all be party members of the main parties. Why make this change? The Council acting not in the public interest but in the interests of their own party members. No elections were held. The public were excluded from what are publicly paid for, public service posts! The more open countries in Europe that wanted to hold elections for these key posts in the European governance system were stopped. Why? because it would make the other governments look like petty dictators. Imagine one country publishing an advertisement for candidates for a Commissioner, nominated by any citizen. Then imagine the public outrage elsewhere when one government allowed 'their' people to vote while other governments refused to do so! The uproar would be worse than refusing referendums or ignoring the results if they were inconvenient.

So governments apply a technique to make appointments quickly before a debate takes place. No one can pretend that it is democratic. It is a party political stitch-up. And a new "External Action Service" could provide even more jobs for party members if the same cartel practices apply. The EEAS has not yet been organized, mainly because of power struggle on the budget control, and these new guidelines.

The new Lisbon Treaty tries to weld two incompatible systems together. De Gaulle wanted to run the show under an autocratic system. The Community system has five independent institutions that make sure that no interest groups can dominate and all citizens have the maximum amount of freedom to arrive at the fairest solution for all.

Popularity of parties is falling continually. So is funding. Under the Treaty of Lisbon, this independence of European institutions is confused so that parties and governments can dominate over the non-political population. A vice-president of the Commission also presides over the Council of Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the 27 Member States (but not other ministers in councils which are presided over by a national rotating presidency).

The nomination for Washington was made by the Commission because it involves a Commission office. Originally such offices were Information Offices of the European Commission but the national governments would like to control and organize them. The European Commission was given specific powers in sectoral Communities such as originally coal and steel, customs, commerce, and atomic matters, but not in other areas of foreign policy and military matters. For the latter, national governments show little inclination to Communitize their resources by placing them under a European supranational authority.

National governments also have their own diplomatic offices. A new 'diplomatic' European External Action Service is still not in place. This is likely to provide a lot of new jobs, while there is no sign that normal national diplomatic posts will decline. Recent surveys show the reverse trend. National populations need national diplomats abroad to lobby for national and regional, even city interests.

The Ambassadorial spat is also a question of glitz over substance. Glitz comes from giving inaccurate or exaggerated titles like Ambassador to high paying posts where the office has different functions from national diplomacy. Substance -- that is what provides the essence of European common policy -- still comes from the supranational Community base (the two remaining communities, the Economic Community and Euratom and the heritage of the first). Only a little is added by other areas such as Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) if the 27 cannot provide a coherent foundation of agreement based on public trust, real democracy, open institutions and the European rule of law. Trust is the principal victim.

The question is really: Do Europeans want a Commission retaining its legal, delegated powers that encourage it to be impartial and independent and to speak for all, including minorities? Or should the Commission become the lap-dog of ministers, acting too often like party politicians rather than Statesmen/ women? If Europeans prefer an impartial, independent Commission to power politics, then the Commission should be encouraged to nominate a competent candidate and the Council should reform itself, then support, encourage and protect the delegated powers they provided in treaties. All institutions must encourage more democratic, open assessment and the European rule of law.