Budget8: The underhand, one trillion euro budget -- Parliament breaks Lisbon Treaty law again!

The time has come to start re-aligning EU financing with the principles of autonomy, transparency and fairness and equipping the EU to reach its agreed policy objectives.' These are the words of European Commission's 'A Budget for 2020' -- its proposals for a multi-annual financial framework (MFF) 2013-2020.

The proposal was presented by Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso IN SECRET in the European Parliament on 29 June 2011. Again!

So much for TRANSPARENCY. So much for FAIRNESS for citizens. It is a strange idea of transparency for the press and the public to be firmly excluded from hearing exactly what goes on at a meeting of two democratic institutions. It is a bizarre idea of fairness to exclude taxpayers from a room full of people planning to seize their money.

The doors were shut and guarded to stop any ordinary taxpayer from entering the sixth floor chamber of the Paul-Henri Spaak building. In it were assembled, besides Commissioners Barroso and Lewandowski, all the presidents of the political party groups plus legal and other officials. What a sauce! A secret budget meeting would be a major scandal in any national parliament. Here it involves BIG money, European taxpayers' money.

The Commission has proposed that taxes for the EU should rise from around one percent of Gross National Income to 1.11 percent by 2020. Whichever way you slice it that represents a substantial increase in the taxes or levies that European citizens have to pay. The calculation has also shifted from GNP figures to GNI. GNI is the same thing as GNP but with indirect business taxes deducted. A trillion euros is involved in the budget plan under consideration.

I haven't seen the citizens massing on the streets demanding a 11 percent rise in money that should be taken from their pockets! I haven't seen them massing for the projects that the politicians have devised. What is the explanation?

Possibly what the Commission Budget Document meant was not Autonomy, that is free-spending of taxes by the parties machines. That includes setting their own salaries and perks. What they meant was AUTOCRACY of the political class (in the EU and governments) to raise taxes at will.

All the institutions of the Community that were created by the Founding Fathers to express NON-POLITICAL, Organized Civil Society have been suppressed or taken over by the new political class. That is why this autocracy should be referred to as a political CARTEL because it suppresses the free market of ideas and democratic accountability of the parties. It refuses to treat the citizen seriously, making politicians autocrats not servants. Politicians have just two demands of the people: money to run their party machines and acceptance of the policy they hand down to them without proper consultation.

The cartel has distorted the meaning of democratic representation, which involves free-speech and accountability, not party machinery running roughshod over the citizens.

The European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek is reported as saying: 'The Commission's proposal on the long-term budget for the EU is an intelligent starting point for negotiations. The next MFF will be one of the most important in the EU's history. It will set the direction for the Union at an exceptional time when the European project is under pressure from the sovereign debt crisis and from external instability.'

The sovereign debt crisis is largely a problem of the politicians, by the politicians about money for the politicians and party funding, involving soaring national debts and falsified statistics. The countries that kept their budget books straight and where the parties did not accept 'funding' from rich people and associations in return for a tax-free break, are not in a 'sovereign debt crisis'.

At the core of many of these 'sovereign debt' countries is the need for parties to get funds and they are willing to bend the rules to get them for the voters, the public and large corporations. When this dishonesty becomes exposed at the local, regional and national level, Europe seems to them the next level to be exploited. This is an old and growing scam that brought wine lakes, meat mountains in the Gaullist era and useless or non-existent infrastructure in southern Italy thanks to the corrupt regional policy. It was followed by massive infusions of cash to Greece in the 1980s, agreed by Europe's party politicians, much of which subsequently 'disappeared'

We now have political theatre without legitimacy or substance. The Commission has thrown off any veneer of independence. It is composed exclusively of national politicians. They are apparently in a debate with politicians of the same parties in the Council -- representing national governments. The Parliament is also composed of nationally elected politicians of exactly the same controlling parties. They refuse to hold Europe-wide elections as required by the treaties for sixty years.

This is not democracy because the most important element, individuals in civil society and organised civil society who ultimately have to pay are left out in the cold, because the doors are locked. The press is barred. The debate inside is about a fait accompli.

Mr Buzek continued: 'A system of real own resources would be fairer, more transparent, simpler and equitable. We should also see an end to rebates, exceptions and correction mechanisms that have accumulated within the current system.'

That gives the game away. It is transparent only for the politicians. The citizens -- including the non-political majority of the EU -- have not accepted or even had a say in the Commission/ Council budget and its assumptions. A democratic budget is supposed to relate to citizens' demands and citizens' needs -- expressed in fully functional Community institutions. It should not be fixed according to the whims of the political barons themselves. The present procedure -- which is inherited from the Gaullist autocratic system -- lacks any semblance of real democratic legitimacy. It has more in common to the so-called People's Democracies of the Soviet era.

The chairman of the EP's Budget Committee had something to say about secrecy. Not the Parliament's secret meeting but another institution. He said that 'a debate of such importance should not be held in the secrecy of ministerial meetings behind closed doors. This should become the subject of as wide a possible public debate, including a conference with full involvement of national parliaments. In the coming days we will make an effort toward realising this.'

A closed door Parliament is telling the closed-door Council of Ministers not to be secret! Herumph! The Commission's presentation in secret in the Parliament was illegal under the Lisbon Treaty. This bogus treaty was passed by politicians in spite of citizens voting in referendums that they did not like the system.

Article 15 of the Lisbon Treaty's TFEU deals with institutional consideration of financial legislation. It states: 'The European Parliament shall meet in public, as shall the Council when considering and voting on a draft legislative act.'

It also makes clear who should be in control of the budget: civil society, not the political class. The first paragraph of Article 15 states:
'In order to promote good governance and ensure the participation of civil society, the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies shall conduct their work as openly as possible.'

It is not difficult to open the door to one or two reporters or provide a video feed. Yet this was refused -- ILLEGALLY.

The Lisbon Treaty generation of politicians is now embarking on a vast misadventure of illegitimacy. They suppressed referendum results. They refused to accept those that took place until the voters were forced to vote again under threats. They have embarked on internal policies without the full participation of non-political civil society. They have established massive aid and development programmes based on political ideologies -- without the participation of civil society. And after some sixty years the European Parliament and the Civil Society institutions have still not had the electoral framework for free and open elections.

This dereliction of democracy is compounded by the false road-maps. What the Budget document called 'agreed policy objectives' are anti-democratic policies that the party cartel gave themselves. The participants in both the 2020 and 2030 reports were given strict instructions that they were not to deal with European democracy. The political class are afraid of more referendums. They will inevitably come!

The 'agreed policy' reports said nothing about the 'Arab Spring,' global financial piracy, the Japanese Tsunami, drought and religious strife in Africa and elsewhere and other world-changing events that they would not or could not foresee. When such surprises occur the only solution seems to be to throw money at them. Will that work with a nuclear-armed Iran and Pakistan? In many cases the cartel policy of naivety and their pacifistic answer to blackmail may just make matters worse more rapidly. Who is controlling European money going to the wrong forces in potentially violent societies?

The present policy objective of encouraging jihadi and anti-Semitic actors in the region is pure madness! When did the public agree to creating, intolerant Jew- and Christian-free states, giving control to groups that still proclaim terrorism as part of their 'party policies'??

Why do they omit to say that foreign policy should draw from the positive outcome of Europe's great democratic experiment that Schuman proclaimed in 1949, his declaration of 9 May 1950 and founding Fathers' Great Charter of 18 April 1951? Nothing!! It brought peace. The 'agreed policy objectives' applying the parties' wilfully ignorant ideologies WILL NOT!

No public mandate exists from the people for the EU budget. The politicians may want to try to fool themselves by this dishonest, underhand window-dressing. It does not fool the public who know that the system is unfair and not transparent for democracy. A system that refuses to discuss democracy and improve what they call democracy is not only suspect, it is obviously not democratic at all. Schuman said the test of a real democracy was the desire to improve itself.

In referendums several nations voted into oblivion a Constitutional treaty. A democratic Europe requires unanimity among free democratic States otherwise it is imperialism. Supranational democracy has to unite democracies not compel them by force. The people gave no mandate to the Lisbon Treaty. Proper referendums were refused.

The politicians disagreed with the people. The politicians in a totally disreputable move brought this rejected treaty back with a new name, the Reform or Lisbon Treaty. Who is trying to fool whom? Without democratic control the Lisbon Treaty is an uncontrollable money machine for the party politicians. It exploits the people who cannot yet escape from the main parties because they always act in coalition, a cartel. The EU budget provides money for their party cadres that they cannot get by honest means at the national level.

This self-deceit has serious effects on the politicians themselves. The underhandedness makes it seemingly impossible for European leaders to listen institutionally to taxpayers. They believe in their own 'smoke and mirrors' that gives them power to thumb their noses at public opinion and even their own script -- the Lisbon Treaty sham.

Supranational democracy could help resolve the euro crisis and set realistic goals for the budget. The politicians however are locked in a vicious downward spiral of declining public confidence, increasing financial black-holes, knowing full well that more democratic accountability will result in them losing control and maybe their political heads too.

In a supranational Community, greed for public money and power is a recipe for disaster.

Proliferation5 : 'I will kill anyone who dishonours Islam' says minister of nuclear-armed Pakistan

'If someone dishonors Islam in front of me, I will shoot him dead!' Those are the reported remarks of Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik at a press conference.

He was speaking after the assassination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, who had championed the rights of Aasia Bibi and denounced the blasphemy charges against her as 'trumped up'. The Christian convert is facing execution because of what she was alleged to have said during a row over drinking water when her neighbours called her impure. They were not present days later when the charge with its mandatory death penalty was laid. Nor could her alleged words be repeated in court as that would be considered as repeating the blasphemy! She is currently awaiting an appeal court hearing.

The Governor was shot 25 times by his own security guard, whose action has been acclaimed by large, noisy sections of the nation and militant religious leaders. He was showered with rose petals and garlands.

A quasi-majority of the country expressed approval of the murder of Governor Taseer and for anyone else who expressed similar opinions of religious freedom. Are they acting out of ignorance (and wanting to stay ignorant) or out of fear that the basis of the State will be overturned by free discussions, or fear that they too might end up murdered?

What is extraordinary is that Pakistani Interior Minister's remarks -- extreme as they are -- were seen as an attempt to allay the violent wrath and murderous incitement of members of the religious groups. They were upset at the state funeral given to Governor Taseer. This 'moderate' face is extremely dangerous both inside and outside Pakistan.

In 2009 eight Christians were killed in the town of Gojra in Punjab following unsubstantiated allegations that a Christian had desecrated the Koran. Last year more than 80 members of the minority Ahmadi sect of Islam were killed in two mosques in Lahore. The small Hindu population is scared by the abduction, forced marriage and compulsory islamization of its infant daughters.

These events raise the most serious questions for Europe. What is the difference with an individual and the West as a whole that lies 'in front' of the Pakistani government? How does the minister distinguish between an Ahmadi or a Christian who expresses dissent at religious autocracy and wholesale murder?

The murderers were their own judge, jury and executioner. Minister Malik's opinion reinforces this. That is the way of anarchy. It will only be resolved, as history shows, when the strongest sectarian power wins.

Europe has rejected that concept of power politics, the rule of the fist whether religious, political, ideological or racist. It has managed to create the longest peace in the more than two thousand year history of Europe, thanks to the Community method.

In past centuries many parts of Europe were conquered by Islam. They rejected it. They preferred freedom of thought. They did not like forced conversion. They did not want to be considered second-class citizens or dhimmis, if they retained their faith in the God of the Bible.

Supranational democracy is based on Christian principles where everyone is treated equally. That applies to Christian and non-Christians.

Schuman warned about the dangers of confounding the separation of the religious domain with the political.

A theocracy does not recognise the principle of separation of the two powers. It imposes on religious thought responsibilities which do not belong to it. Under such a regime the political differences risk degenerating into religious fanaticism; holy war is the most frightening expression of a bloody exploitation of religious feeling.

For the West today, which on the whole still agrees that Islam does not present a way of enlightenment, science and truth, the logical conclusion of the minister's policy is that anyone who stands before his eyes or that of his government and who disagrees with his religious conviction (and maybe does not even know it) may be freely assassinated by that minister or that government.

The remark comes from a nuclear-armed State. The government's policy in the past was to encourage nuclear proliferation to Islamic States. Its bomb-maker, Abdul Qadeer (A Q) Khan, loaded with the nation’s highest honours, actively sought nuclear proliferation for ideological reasons.

A clarification is urgently required. The West should also be clear about its own policy. It needs to establish the proper bases of the supranational system.

Foreign policy should be based on open and publicly debated reciprocity. This need for open debate is especially important in the democracies. How should the West react to Islamic States or those where religious sectarians run rampant and who criticize Christians and who dishonour Christianity, Judaism, deny the Holocaust, the Bible and Western civilization?

Both the European Union and North American States of USA and Canada are founded on the principle of free speech, the right to choose and freedom of religion. Also a main European fundamental right is the ability to freely change one's religion. All that requires an intensive debate on religious values. No incitement to violence can be made to forbid this discussion. It requires an atmosphere of tolerance and open discussion for all its citizens. The Community system allows religious tolerance because it is based on a supranational democratic system.

Certain conditions are necessary if East and West can live together in peace. If the West looks eye to eye with the Islamic East, tolerance must exist on both sides. Mutual respect is required. Reciprocity of tolerance is vital for being interactive parts of a global society.

Today this is even more vital as trade depends on open borders and the prevention of terrorism. A major part of world trade is the information economy, newspapers, books and the Internet. While the web is filled with poisonous Jihadist sites and blogs (especially for those who know Arabic and other languages), it also provides free access to alternative religious views and facts.

Is this what Islamic sectarians fear as much as do all autocratic governments? Information can be more explosive than terrorist bombs. The human soul has an unquenchable thirst for freedom. Sectarians can do nothing against it, whether by mobs, fire or the sword. The problem of conversions and religious tolerance will not go away but only become more prominent in the coming years. The drive of information technology is also an unstoppable force.

Tolerance was declared to be a part of the Pakistani State Constitution by its founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah in his first speech as president on 11 August 1947 to the Constituent Assembly.

'The first duty of a government is to maintain law and order, so that the life, property and religious beliefs of its subjects are fully protected by the State,' he said. The angularities between different religions and Moslem sects such as Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on will vanish under law. 'You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed -- that has nothing to do with the business of the State.'

Some later leaders tried to make Pakistan a different type of State where death is the penalty for disagreeing with their version of Islam. This change is a vastly more dangerous move in a nuclear-armed State.

In 1947 days after Jinnah's speech, up to a million died in the disputes between Hindus and Moslems during the bloody days of partition and the separate independence of India and Pakistan.

Those people were killed by individuals and mobs. Today, the whole world could be set afire by acts of intolerance and nuclear war.

Proliferation2: Why Europe should be tackling the ideological core of terrorism

As much as the EU, terrorists are likely to have set their own objectives for 2020. Are we prepared? How do you stop terrorists getting nuclear materials? At the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, the best that the presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers and other representatives from 47 states could agree on was a non-binding agreement. Europe's founding fathers said that a supranational solution was the most effective, but our leaders are not listening.

Is Washington's vague hope of internationalism sufficient to block a disaster? Will it guarantee Europeans their safety? Would you put your trust in the hope that some "businessman" somewhere was not willing to make a fortune selling whatever technology and materials terrorists needed? Would you trust governments with your life?

Some like Pakistan and its bomb-maker, Abdul Qadeer (A Q) Khan, loaded with the nation's highest honours, actively sought nuclear proliferation for ideological reasons. Khan admitted on national television that he had actively proliferated nuclear bomb technology and designs. But he did not act alone. Nothing could be done without governments and the military to build the bomb.

A Q Khan was trained in Germany, Belgium and above all Holland. He stole the secrets of uranium centrifuge techniques while working in the Netherlands. That careless nuclear security by Europeans has had disastrous results for us all.

Pakistani Government deals were made with China to get bomb plans. Pakistani officials then proliferated uranium technology to Iran, North Korea, Libya and who knows who else. Libya was a big surprise to many when it confessed it had nuclear weapons. A ship had been inspected and was found to be loaded with Pakistani uranium centrifuges.

What of non-State terrorists with a fanatically destructive religio-political motive? Crude bomb plans were also found in an Al Qaida camp in Afghanistan.

"Terrorist networks such as al-Qaida have tried to acquire the material for a nuclear weapon, and if they ever succeeded, they would surely use it," President Barak Hussein Obama told the Washington Nuclear Security Summit. "Were they to do so, it would be a catastrophe for the world, causing extraordinary loss of life and striking a major blow to global peace and stability."

Look what terrorist groups did without atomic weapons. Eleven Saudi young men (and one from the Emirates) died in the four planes aimed at Washington and New York on 9/11. For this suicide mission they did not have to spend millions for their weapons. They did not import complicated technology. For the cost of a few dollars they caused damage estimated at equivalent to knocking out major countries of the EU.

How? cheap knives for opening cardboard boxes. The world market economy itself can be rapidly cut to ribbons by the hands of suicide bombers wielding cheap box knives. The events of 11 September 2001, make it clear that the profitable functioning of a global market is itself the TARGET of suicide fanatics. The opposition for them is the market of the world devourers and US power.

The well-organized destruction of the market and self-destruction of a "consumer" defy the very premises of economic logic usually employed in internationalism. (Economics and trade sanctions is based on the materialist premise of personal economic benefit).

Nonetheless, suicide for religio-political motives affects the market and will continue to threaten the market into the foreseeable future. A score of 'consumers' having bought a few dollars worth of box knives caused an immediate $100 billion worth of damage to New York.

Reuters reported the loss of value in one week on the New York Stock Exchange as $1.2 Trillion. Then as the truth sank in, US stock values plunged with a loss of $6.6 Trillion over the previous 18 months, in parallel with the sudden oil price hike. This sum, said Reuters, was equivalent to the combined economies of Japan, Germany and France.

This was foreseeable. In 1998 Osama bin Laden together with Jihadist groups in Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh, announced their intentions in a 'Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders' (that is the West). Terrorists are interested in far more than the market. Anyone who calls the West 'Crusaders' has a complicated and erroneous agenda.

The most important factor is not the weapon, the box knives. It was the ideology. What motivates the decision of young people to die in what they considered martyrdom? In reality it was nothing other than the manipulation of their minds and their inability to understand truth. Why were they fired up with a corresponding ideological hatred of the West?

Europe must decide. Is it going to continue to be a victim of threats of violence? Will its foreign policy be dictated by violence and blackmail? Or will it reassert its values on open discussion, debate and in-depth analysis of the flaws of such religio-political ideologies aimed at domination.

The religio-political ideology at the core of Europe's present danger is much more insidious than the Soviet ideology of dialectical materialism. That saw Europe threatened by both internally fomented violence, atomic warfare and the lies about a unreal, workers' paradise. It fell apart because of communism's internal contradictions, lack of logic and moral bankruptcy. It took some brave people to stand up against it, both inside and outside the Iron Curtain. The same could be said about Hitler's violence and Nazi propaganda, his ersatz for truth.

Truth will out. Today we need to expose the lies about suicide bombers' false paradise in an open discussion with all the institutions of Europe's democracy. Terrorists are sometimes ignorant and ill-educated on what they profess to be their main motivation: Islam and the Koran. This ignorance represents a major danger to the rest of us. Bad Islamic theology, unreason and prejudice has to be tackled and dismantled as Communism was -- by exposing its fallacies and untruth. Europeans must make clear that threats and violence are not an acceptable alternative to debate. For that challenge Europe must strengthen its own physical, mental and spiritual resources.

Euratom with its huge potential for democratic involvement and a supranational Community must be a fundamental part of this debate. It deals more than controlling nuclear proliferation but democracy, the rule of law, human values, serving one another, the basis of any sane society.