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

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

Rubbish!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He wrote in September 1962:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nuclear Proliferation: "The entire free world is threatened" -- German Chancellor Merkel. When will Europe act?

“A nuclear bomb in the hands of an Iranian President who denies the Holocaust, threatens Israel and denies Israel the right to exist is not acceptable. Not only Israel but the entire free world is threatened. This is why the free world is meeting this threat head on, if necessary with tough economic sanctions.”

Those are the words of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She was addressing both houses of the U.S. Congress on November 3, 2009. Her warning about religiously-motivated nuclear proliferation by Iran was enthusiastically applauded by Congress.

Yet Europe seems happy to supply the knife to cut its own throat. The astute international author and commentator Matthias Kuentzel says much of the high technology for producing such weapons of mass death comes from Europe.

'According to the German-Iranian Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Tehran, two thirds of Iranian industrial enterprises and three quarters of its small and medium-sized firms use machines and systems of German origin. As Berlin’s Federal Agency for Foreign Trade affirmed in 2007, Germany is still Iran’s No. 1 supplier of almost all types of machinery apart from power systems and construction, where Italian manufacturers dominate the market.'

When is such free trade, stupidity and suicidal? Should Europe be supplying Iran with instruments for the death of the West? Who in Brussels is listening while the regime and the crowds shout 'Death to the Great Satan' or 'the world devourers' -- USA, Britain and Europe? They have been shouting that for THIRTY years.

An aggressive Shiite State willing to acquire and use nuclear arms is not only a problem to the West but all surrounding countries. What does the leader of Egypt's 78 million people say? President Mubarak warned the Muslim neighbouring countries of the plans of the sectarian leaders of the Iranian Islamic Republic. "The Persians are trying to devour the Arab states," he said. “A nuclear armed Iran with hegemonic ambitions is the greatest threat to Arab nations today,” Mubarak told the Arab Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia last year,

'We must prepare ourselves to rule the world,' President Ahmadinejad declared in the holy city of Qom. The possible Iranian use the Bomb depends on their religious and ideological framework. Arguments based on commerce or western economics alone will not be effective. What use is it to persuade someone that his goods will be cheaper or dearer if he is preparing for religious suicide? His motivation is ideological, not financial. Moreover he is paying some terrorist to kill you, or maybe he will do it himself for the fictitious physical pleasures of a doctrinaire afterlife.

The hegemonic leadership principle, velayat-e-fiqih, is a sort of dictatorship of the "enlightened leaders' -- namely the revolutionary ayatollahs who have seized power, killed and tortured opponents. (This is as hypocritical and illogical as the 'dictatorship of the workers' being defined by the top leaders of the Soviet Communist party.)

They are training and funding terror groups around the world. And the oil-rich Iranian leaders are not only on an accelerated nuclear programme but building long-range missile systems at enormous cost and sacrifice. For what purpose? Who is threatening them?

The sectarian view of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is that the most important task of the Iranian Revolution must be to prepare the way for the return of the Twelfth Imam, who disappeared/ died in 874. Why? Because he was the last physical descendant of Muhammad and that is important for Shiite doctrine.

To believe that one can conjure up the dead by death threats to others -- the West, 'dissident' Islamic regions, a further genocide of Jews or religious destruction of non-believers -- is bound to lead the world to a disaster of unprecedented proportions. False ideology can only be countered by an effective counter ideology. That involves reason and truth, to use an old-fashioned word.

This Twelfth Imam is called the Mahdi “divinely guided one.” Shiites believe, he will be victorious in many great battles. He will 'guide' (some opponents say 'distort') the Hebrew and Christian scriptures for his own purposes. The Shiites say his forces will defeat the 'forces of evil' and bring about a new era in which Islam ultimately becomes the dominant religion throughout the world. The Shiites have been waiting patiently for the Twelfth Imam for more than a millennium. Waiting is not an aggressive act. But Ahmadinejad and other religio-political leaders believe they can now hasten the return through a nuclear war and funding terrorism and strife.

This religious ideology in world politics distinguishes Iran from other governments with nuclear weapons. Why? because it seems to encourage even the destruction of the planet as a religious duty.

The doctrine of Ayatollah Khomeini, the revolutionary founder of the State, is taught in schoolbooks: “I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against the whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all of them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom, which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another’s hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours.”

Not all Shiites agree with Khomeini, Ahmedinejad or the present theology of the ruling, sectarian ayatollahs. Some consider them to be not only politically but theologically in great error. Yet the Council of Ministers was fooled by its disinformation. This was only exposed by strong action of the European Parliament. MEPs took the Council of Ministers to Court, time after time, until they saw reason. Iran still has an unholy mix of Soviet centralism and Shiite Islam striving for world hegemony. The European Court ruling does not eliminate Europe's danger as many peace-seeking believers are side-lined and out of power.

The fact is that Europe is facing great dangers and seems far from applying the solution for peace that the Founding Fathers gave to Europe more than half a century ago.