Jihad7: EU's muddled policy encourages all Egypt's politicians to believe the West are enemies

One year after Mohammed Morsi became President of Egypt after a popular revolt against military control, millions of Egyptians again protested, this time at Morsi’s autocratic Muslimist rule. They called for his resignation. The headquarters of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood was gutted and burnt.

The European Union is pumping billions of euros into Egypt. Most of the recent money has been given as a blank check — to President Morsi’s government. What conclusions are democrats in Egypt to make of this folly?

Has the European External Action Service (EEAS) heard of Pavlov’s dog? You can train an animal by feeding for good or bad. If the dog is bad and angry and you give it food out of fear, you reinforce its nastiness to get you to give it more food.

Humans are more complicated and react to psychological stimulus too. But what on earth is the logic behind the vast amounts of taxpayers’ money that European leaders feel they have the freedom to give to corrupt and hostile states? The army has given Morsi’s government 48 hours to listen to the people. The EU imposes no conditions for EU tax money freely given to those that the people call its new despots, the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood, according to documents seized in a US terrorist case, calls for a global ‘Grand Jihad’ sabotaging Western civilization from inside. The terrorist organization Hamas is a Muslim Brotherhood branch. Its constitution declares that its aim to kill all Jews. Other activist organs are found throughout Africa, Asia, and the Americas. In WW2  the Nazi extermination of Jews was fomented and  several SS divisions of Muslims were raised through the Muslim Brotherhood co-founder, Hajj al-Husseini. He later helped create the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) as a Muslim Brotherhood terrorist gang.

It is not only Morsi that the EU should be wary of. Egyptian  leaders from  the Muslimist parties have been filmed saying in private that America and Europe (which supply billions in aid) are their main enemies! Egyptian politicians thought they were speaking in private with President Morsi. Then Morsi shocked them all by saying the meeting was in fact being broadcast by Egypt’s Channel 1 TV. (See it yourself below).

The European taxpayers have been supplying Egypt with around eight billion euros of aid and loans to help a transition to democracy and a more just society. This is nearly equivalent to Cyprus bail-out sums. It is far beyond what the USA supplies as mainly military aid. What is the tax-payer getting in return? Who is in control of the funds?

The EU has lost its vision. The European Community was not created by funding and bribing but by creating a moral and ethical framework for peace. This did not cost billions. It was inexpensive. It was effective. Robert Schuman’s vision started with the basis of Human Rights based on supranational law.

Under Morsi Egypt has not become a more tolerant society towards its 10 percent minority Coptic, its other Christians, its Baha’is, its non-religious communities and its few remaining Jews. EU money to an intolerant despot makes Egypt become a more intolerant society.

Are the various Christians able to build churches and assemble in peace? No. They are still forbidden from building, renovating or even repairing places of worship. Christian girls are forcibly islamized. Non-Muslim men are refused the right to marry whosoever they wish.

What is the West’s policy to intolerant Islamic countries and Sharia law? Many EU governments subsidize  mosques at home together with recycled oil-funds from the Saudis and the OPEC cartel. What principles of mutuality and democracy is the EU applying?

The US Department of State reports that the Christians in Egypt include:

the Armenian Apostolic, Catholic (Armenian, Chaldean, Greek, Melkite, Roman, and Syrian), Maronite, Orthodox (Greek and Syrian), and Anglican/Episcopalian churches, which range in size from several thousand to hundreds of thousands. A Protestant community, established in the mid-19th century, includes the following churches: Presbyterian, Baptist, Brethren, Open Brethren, Revival of Holiness (Nahdat al-Qadaasa), Faith (Al-Eyman), Church of God, Christian Model Church (Al-Mithaal Al-Masihi), Apostolic, Grace (An-Ni’ma), Pentecostal, Apostolic Grace, Church of Christ, Gospel Missionary (Al-Kiraaza bil Ingil), and the Message Church of Holland (Ar-Risaala).
There are also followers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and Mormons (who meet in private homes).

Shia Muslims constituting less than 1 percent of the population are killed. Shiite leaders blame the lynchings on the government. There are also small groups of Quranists and Ahmadi Muslims. The once numerous Jewish community numbers fewer than 70 persons, mostly senior citizens. There are 1,000 to 1,500 Jehovah’s Witnesses and 1,500 to 2,000 Bahais; however, the government does not recognize these groups.
The US State Department says:

The government interprets Sharia as forbidding Muslims from converting to another religion despite there being no statutory prohibitions on conversion. This policy, along with the refusal of local officials to recognize such conversions legally, constitutes a prohibition in practice.

The EU Neighbourhood policy is supposedly based, not on military assistance, but encouraging Human Rights and the Rule of Law. These, the EEAS officials say repeatedly, are the foundation of EU foreign policy. What are the facts?

The European Court of Auditors said in a recent report that the European Union has not taken effective action to ensure taxpayers money is used for the purpose it was so generously given by EU leaders. That is to support European values. It has tried to trace one billion euros of the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument, ENPI.  It failed. Taxpayers money is more likely to encourage the opposite goals. Egypt has no audit trail at all for some four billion euros.
The Court of Auditors blamed:

• Lack of budgetary transparency,
• an ineffective audit function and
• endemic corruption in Egypt.

It said there was little or no real dialogue on corruption, Human Rights, torture and persecution. The main worries of the population were simply not addressed.

Large sections of Egyptian society expressed strong concerns about what they perceived to be a shift towards Sharia law, restrictions on both the freedom of expression and women’s and minorities’ rights, and the continued privileged role of the military.

The accountants saw the problems. The politicians shut their eyes. Conditions were not imposed. The EEAS and Commission talked about ‘deep democracy’ without seemingly being able to define it in relation to Sharia law. The EEAS/Commission still talks about the Arab Spring without seemingly taking into account that many suffering people consider it to be a winter.  The Auditors’ report said:

(a) the rights of minorities: sectarian violence has been increasing with Christians suffering the brunt of the violence.
Investigations into the violence have been sluggish or non-existent.
(b)  the rights of women: while this was an area where some advances were made over the last decade of the Mubarak regime, this progress is at risk since the uprising.

The Court report concluded:

Overall the EEAS and Commission have not been able to effectively manage EU  support to improve governance in Egypt.

If you pour money without accountancy controls into an already corrupt society you will encourage corruption. Most of EU’s money goes straight into the black hole of the national budget and is untraceable. Is that what Europe’s poor who also contribute to this export largesse of EU politicians expect?

The first responsibility of EU leaders dealing with taxpayers’ money is to ask the taxpayers what they wish to do with the money the leaders have collected. Secondly set up systems that have adequate controls to analyze whether the funds are properly spent and thirdly have a thorough review of the spending programmes to ensure they are effective and the productive of tolerance, democracy, justice and the rule of law.

Has pouring money into Egypt made the Egyptian politicians more sympathetic to the EU? The answer is the opposite. Many Islamists believe that if the West gives money to  a Muslim State, then it is in fulfillment of Koranic obligation of the non-believer or dhimmi. A dhimmi is a second class citizen, someone who refuses to adhere to Islam in a Sharia law based State. He has to pay a tax, usually onerous, called jizya (or jizia). It is not uncommon for clerics to say that US or European aid is confirmation of their down-trodden status as dhimmis and the aid is jizia.

Such religious questions and ideologies should be a core policy debate for the External Action Service. European experience shows that tolerance can be reinforced by non-financial aid such as advice about building a democratic governance system or ensuring joint ventures — like the European Coal and Steel Community — are undertaken. EU-Egyptian partnerships should be unambiguously based on openness, ethics and good accounting.  Law-based Convention of Human Rights including freedom of expression will also help fight ignorance in open debate.

The EEAS says that Human Rights are the basis for its policy. It should ensure that all aids conforms to the Strasbourg Convention and not the Sharia-based monstrosity of the Cairo Declaration that gives undefined human rights and powers only to those who submit to Islam and denies it to others including sectarians. Hiraba or local ‘justice’ involves violent lynchings of people, amputations and crucifixions for those just suspected of crime, theft or robbery.

Why is the EEAS not leading a debate about values across the Mediterranean? What about lynch mob justice in Egypt? What is its view of Sharia law and Hiraba (WARNING graphic images)?
 And why has the EEAS not even got an analysis for European citizens, the taxpayers, of Sharia law and its implications for Egypt and for Europe? According to a UN report, 99.3% of Egyptian women — yes 99.3 % — say they have experienced sexual harassment with sixty percent saying they have been touched inappropriately.

The European Commission declared 2013 to be the year of the Citizen. Does this stop at the confines of the Berlaymont? Or should it include the treatment of women and the concept of dhimmis?

What sort of monitoring does the EEAS have of Egyptian, North African  media? Much of this is available in Arabic on YouTube but is immediately dropped off YouTube when translated into English.  Policy for EU citizens cannot be founded on complacent illusions of an ignorant leadership.

Do policy makers deal with reality? Many other Muslim leaders in their various parties such as Morsi’s Freedom and Justice party, the Nour party, the Reform and Development Party, the Islamic Labour Party and Muslim Brotherhood consider the West as main enemies.

How can we be sure? President Morsi presided a meeting of the leaders of these parties and scholars of Egypt’s main university Al Azhar. They thought the meeting was secret. Their views were open, frank and ignorant. They all seemed to agree that USA and Israel (the only democratic State in the region) were their main enemies in the world. Was Europe included as Egypt’s enemy? Maybe. Perhaps like some Egyptians they all think that Europe will become Islamic in ten years time. Others spout plans for the reconquest of Europe.

What plans does the EEAS have that Egypt will be fully democratic in ten years time? Does it explain to Egyptians how Europe created peace and prosperity after two thousand years of constant warfare?

The secret meeting that was broadcast on Channel 1 TV was about the dispute with Ethiopia over the Nile Waters agreement. The scholar from Al Azhar university maintained that America and Israel must be behind Ethiopian desire for water and power.  He said that Ethiopians are diverting Nile water to Israel –  by a pipeline more than a thousand kilometers under the Red Sea. However Israel is quite capable of producing vast amounts of water by its present desalination plants. It has no use for such a stupid, vulnerable, costly and totally unrealistic, crazy idea. A look at the map and a superficial understanding of the hydrology of the Nile and its two sources, the Blue Nile in Ethiopia and the White Nile in the Great Lakes, would have shown anyone how ridiculous the idea was.

Yet without a free society and open debate,  even Egyptian leaders see plots everywhere while they refuse to deal with peace and justice at home or abroad. They wanted to either destroy the Ethiopian dam, form anti-Ethiopian regional alliances, intervene internal Ethiopian politics or subvert it by disinformation.

Such international problems need to be resolved democratically. Water agreements require implementation in peace with peaceful revisions where necessary. In the absence of a supervisory power such as the British had in 1923, that requires a common legal basis.

Any regional sharing of water must be based on similar principles of honesty and human rights that lay at the base of Europe’s Coal and Steel Community. That is why a Strasbourg style Convention of Human Rights  is necessary for all the Mediterranean and such regional agreements as the Nile basin.

This law-based Convention of Human Rights including freedom of expression will also help fight ignorance in open debate.

Thanks go to MEMRI, Middle East Media Research Institute, a private organisation, and others which have translated this information from Arabic. They should get financial support and help from the EEAS. Public awareness of where their tax money is going requires adequate translation at least into English for a proper dialogue of values.

Debate20: Desperately seeking Dishonest or Illiterate Citizens for Commission Jobs

All normal, honest citizens who can read and follow the treaty laws should be excluded from future EU Commissions. That, in effect, is what the present Commission-politicians have recommended. All those high-paid Commission posts will be reserved for political friends, they say. Only Top Citizens (members of their parties) can become Commissioners. It is completely contrary to the letter and spirit of the Community Method.

How should the Commission be elected honestly and openly from the treaties? Europe's founding Charter of 1951 requires the free assent of Citizens. The principles are clear and were published in an open letter to all Member State Delegations and Commissioners in 2008.

Ironically this present outrageous proposal comes in the year that the politician-Commissioners self-proclaimed as the Year of the Citizen. That is typical of what Robert Schuman called a political counterfeit. Isn't every year the Year of the Citizen? And how can anyone proclaim that this year, 2013, is the Year of the Citizen before he or she has asked all the citizens?

When President Nixon and Henry Kissinger announced the Year of Europe for 1973, European politicians reacted with fury and disgust, asking 'Why are we being treated like children? Isn't Europe important enough to be considered priority every year?' It opened up a year of discord and then, exploitation in a Mid-East war, from which Europe has not yet recovered or drawn the lessons. It is a dangerous matter to proclaim a Year of the Citizen -- while at the same time stealthily withdrawing and stealing the rights of Citizens!

The action of the politicians today parallels the deceit of the Communist regimes that Schuman called 'hypocritical'. They called their Soviet-controlled regimes People's Democracies. In reality they were controlled by a similar party political Cartel. It was called a Politburo. Politicians now want to subvert the 'independent' and 'impartial' Commission into a Politburo, contrary to law, morality, historical experience and logic. The Community is based on universal or supranational values. They expose purloined political superiority of the party representative over the Citizen.

The Commission was set up to be the honest broker for Europeans, not a political secretariat. A special problem rises with the latest bit of antidemocratic fraud. The future Top Citizens to be parachuted into the Commission have to be extra-special.

• They have to declare that they will be dishonest or
• They have to maintain that they cannot read the Treaties which give the the job description and qualifications for Commissioners.
• They can say they are 'mentally challenged when it comes to law'.
• Failing that, they can use the old fall-back, 'I am only obeying orders,' when they are chosen by political party machines thinly disguised as governments of nations.

The present Top Citizens of the Commission are all parachuted in from the three major political party families. No one elected them. They want to retain political parachuting as voter confidence drops continuously. Even taking into account the burgeoning protest parties, more electors refuse to vote than vote for what they see as an increasingly corrupt system.

The present Commission were not even properly and legally chosen by the member governments acting for their nations. How is this clear? Because the governments -- all of them -- failed to advertise for the best candidate across their populations. Instead they chose a close political friend, or someone they owed a favour to, or even a disgraced politician or political enemy in their party they wanted to send far away to Brussels. In short all 'governments' chose a politician -- not as the treaties make clear, an experienced, independent, honest citizen from any profession, including a scientist, a lawyer, an engineer, a diplomat, an academic, an ex-entrepreneur or ex-trade-unionist.

The present Commissioners are acting in a cartel as Europe's unelected, unrepresentative and highly partisan Politburo. The Commissioners are supposed and required by law to be INDEPENDENT and take no instructions from national governments or parties. Yet 27 Commissioners sit in Brussels, each one selected by their Member State government.

That turns Europe into secretive internationalism, not democracy. They are supposed to be few in number and European, yet there is exactly one Commissioner per nominating government! This overstaffing was 'temporarily' introduced by the closed-door European Council in order to pressure the second Irish referendum to agree to the Lisbon Treaty.

The Community Method requires that the Commission is to be impartial and the opposite of a partisan. The Community Method requires open government and open procedures. Only if Commissioners are really impartial as just judges in a court of law can the citizen hope that a fair and just policy be agreed by enterprises, workers, consumers, individuals and nations.

Now the Commission-Politburo are asking all future candidates to ignore any Treaty articles dating back to the Community's foundation up to and including the politicians' own Lisbon Treaty. For instance Article 10 TEU says:

10 para 3. Every citizen shall have the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union. Decisions shall be taken as openly and as closely as possible to the citizen.

No more! From now on these politicians want the Commission to be exclusively controlled by the party cartel. They 'recommend' only party politicians can fill these posts -- for ever. Whoever asked them? The posts are open to all Citizens. That is the law. To act otherwise is outside the legal power of the politicians.

There is absolutely no article in the Treaties that says that the Commission posts are reserved for politicians. Nothing. Some articles are misinterpreted by politicians to try to say that politicians have powers to become Commissioners. A closer examination of these shows that in fact they say the opposite.

No politician is a super-citizen. The party cartel are therefore urgently seeking dishonest citizens or those who cannot read such articles and know nothing about the Community Method to pose their candidatures for the post of Commission President or Commissioners. The fallacies in the politicians' arguments and the illegality of their 'recommendation' will be examined in coming commentaries in this debate.  

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?

SECS3: Why your 2002 Euro is now worth 25 cents: the Commission

Europe’s political leaders have debauched your money. Imagine that in 2002 instead of exchanging your national currency into euros you bought gold. Today that gold would buy four times the number of euros. The same goes for oil. If you had bought silver, you'd have even more euros, wheat a bit less. Globally the euro is massively debased.

All along  history, politicians have debased currencies and spent more money than treasuries receive in taxes. Money is supposed to be a store of value. All pensions and investment require that what is saved should not be eaten away by government action. Politicians say they need inflation. That is theft from citizens. A globally-traded Community currency must be able to retain long-term, world value in spite of politicians.

A solid supranational currency cannot be constructed without a fully independent European Commission. The reason involves European ministers who were the first to legally debase the Euro currency. They even broke the inadequate rules in the Stability and Growth Pact. France and Germany then disobeyed European Court judgements. Yet they expect citizens to obey the Court.

The Commission brought this case before the Court. That is probably why the politicians make extra efforts to control it. They have now tried to turn the Commission into an exclusive club for politicians. Previously and according to all the treaties, no politician with a party card should hold the office of Commissioner.

Now politicians want a complete take-over of the Commission. Making it a joint secretariat for European parties would stop it embarrassing governments as lawbreakers in Court. Politicians have created their own complex rules to replace Court action. They want the freedom to debase the currency the way they choose, without Court judgements if possible.

Now composed almost entirely of card-carrying politicians, the Commission has tried to make its own internal rules to ‘permit’ political entryism. They are hardly valid. The treaties are the only legal touchstone that matters. The conduct of national politicians who parachuted their card-carrying friends into the Commission is self-condemnatory.

The citizens of Europe are perfectly able to see this misconduct for what it is. Flagrant violations seem not to deter politicians. Politicians seem addicted to party political nepotism. Normal citizens are despised as second class. The honest citizen scrupulously following treaty law who abandons compromising interests to become a Commission candidate is excluded by the political rascals who don’t.

What has happened is ILLEGAL. The Commission and its President are not reserved posts for party political fodder. It is not a political retirement home.

It is illegal for any politician under all treaties since 1951 including the politicians’ own treaty, that of Lisbon. At best only EX-politicians are allowed. The same applies to others:  EX-businesspeople, EX-trade-unionists, EX-professionals or EX-workers of any stripe. He or she has to resign previous functions.

Today we have three treaties governing the European Union. The Treaty on European Union, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union of Lisbon (these two replacing what was previously called the Customs Union, the European Economic Community or the Common Market) and the other treaty of Rome, Euratom, (also called European Atomic Energy Community treaty).

All of them state the same thing, that the Commission must be independent. No article of any treaty says that the Commission must be composed of politicians or national representatives of Member States.

They say the reverse. Anyone having membership of a political party must resign it. No one must take any instruction from a Member State government or any one else. TEU Article 17 says Commission members must be chosen on the ground of

‘their general competence and European commitment from persons whose independence is beyond doubt.‘

In any court of law it would be clear that if someone signs up to an ideological programme of a political party expressing different interests of lobby groups, then the Commissioner’s independence is more than in doubt. Any businessperson who on becoming Commissioner retained his business or other interests would also be guilty of double standards. Proof of guilt is furnished by party membership cards. The holders are not independent. Attendance at party meetings and participation in party organization is further condemnatory evidence.

The Lisbon treaty says that the Commission shall be chosen after parliamentary elections. Nowhere does it say that a politician involved in the elections should be made Commission President. Article 17 TEU rules it out. It specifies that the Commission must conform to its paragraph 3 and 5 restricting it to persons

‘whose independence is beyond doubt’ and who would ‘not take instructions from any government, or other institution, body, office or entity’. The person must ‘refrain from any action incompatible with their duties.’

That excludes an MEP or party leader whose ideological prejudices are amply proven by the parliamentary election. Nor should Commissioners be composed of national representatives. The Euratom Community commenced with FIVE Commissioners.

No professional activity other than Commissioner duty is allowed, whether paid or not. Lisbon’s Article 245 of the FEU reflects the supranational democracy of the 1951 Treaty of  Paris article 9. All other treaties have confirmed the independence criterion to this day.

Members of the Commission may not, during their term of office, engage in any other occupation, whether gainful or not.

Thus the Community system requires Commissioners to abstain from political parties or any other body whether ‘gainful or not.’

The first impartially chosen Commission was empowered to nominate some of its own members (article 10, Paris). All should have the impartiality of judges in Court and need to resign from bodies that might influence their judgement. Thus any citizen who has independence, experience, the public trust for seeking the European public good and honesty should be eligible.

Choosing Commissioners exclusively from those with party membership cards (2% of the population) is an offensive discriminatory act redolent of Nazism or Communism. It violates the human rights of 98 percent of citizens who are not party members. The majority of the European population refuses to vote in EP elections because of such flagrant abuse.

Sound European money and public confidence starts with the independence of its institutions.

SECS2: Citizens, demand your Euro rights! Top Citizens declare 2013 the Year of the Citizen!

Celebrate! Rejoice! This year 2013 is the Year of European citizens! Europe’s Politburo, its Top Citizens, has declared it to be so, without asking anyone. Did you agree to it or even know about its multimillion euro budget?

Yet hypocritically the politicians have not allowed citizens their rights for more than 60 years. Take the Euro as an example. It is a system devised by incompetent politicians (or ignorant of Community democracy), run by incompetent politicians to the advantage of politicians. Surely citizenship means more than European passports — that is changing the colour and size of national passports.

Europe’s citizens have still no means to control the politicians, nor how they raise taxes and spend them. Most citizens therefore refuse to vote. The citizens have no say in the extraordinary number of treaties, compacts, Stability Funds and Tax Haven companies cooked up by and for politicians in the margins of the Community and too often totally outside it and in flagrant contradiction with Community and democratic principles.

If anyone should consider the word ‘hypocritical’ too strong, remember the Year of the Citizen celebrates the twenty years of the Maastricht Treaty. That ‘EU’ system precipitated a major rejection of Community principles. Democracy.

In its 1992 referendum Denmark with a turnout of 83 % said No to Maastricht. Again the Top Citizens moved in and told them that this was not acceptable. The Danes were told to vote again in 1993. Robert Schuman himself warned about such political counterfeiters. These political counterfeiters are now involved in counterfeit currency. The Gaullists declared names of recipients of the CAP ‘top secret’. Now all currency deals are done in the dead of night behind closed doors. We have secret companies in Luxembourg, declaring themselves above the law.

The Politburo who decided to celebrate this year of citizens for Europe’s 500 million citizens also decided in 2012 that they would not celebrate the sixty years of the Community institutions, Commission, Council, Parliament.  The year 2012 was a NON Year. It took the Nobel Prize Committee to remind the Presidents of these institutions who eagerly took the prize in Oslo that 2012 should have been a major anniversary.

The European Founding Fathers set out the preconditions for a Community currency. This requires democratic legitimacy, not technocratic centralism. It should not be run by politicians. It requires a democratic means to root out political and statistical corruption.

Warnings were studiously ignored in the 1990s when the Euro was created.
Firstly, the political leaders — encouraged by de Gaulle’s ideas — have blocked the articles of the treaties and the Great Charter of 1951 (see http://www.schuman.info ). The Gaullist system ignored European citizens. Instead it made them pay for the Wine Lakes and the Meat Mountain scandals to buy farmer votes in France and elsewhere.

Secondly the post-Gaullist politicians decided to retain closed door Councils and the package deal system. It shut out all citizens from seeing or hearing about how European tax was being shared out among national politicians for their own pet projects. It rejected any elections to Community bodies — until the Court of Justice ruled they were acting illegally. The European parliamentary elections have NEVER been conducted according to Treaty specifications. The EP holds 27 national elections. They always favour of the national government politicians. That is a cheat.

Thirdly we now have the monetary equivalent of the Gaullist Wine Lake system. This time it is currency liquidity. The European Politburo is using THEIR Euro to paper over the cracks of the national currency abuses. This Euro was not originally designed for the corruptions of Greece, Spain and Portugal but for the corrupt practice in Italy, France and Germany.

The Gaullist Franco-German Axis powers were among the first to thumb their noses at the Growth and Stability Pact and ignore the judgements of the European Court of Justice when exposed.

How should a European Supranational Economic and Currency System be structured? The Founding Fathers insisted on democratic control for any currency — because it had to have:

• the people’s support in its creation;
• the democratic means to correct any systemic imperfections for countries, regions, businesses, workers and consumers, for tax systems and for migration policies;
• the powers to innovate fully across the Community and to consider global responsibilities;
• the powers to supervise what politicians might do;
• the means to root out corrupt practice.

The Founding Fathers insisted that democratic institutions must be developed BEFORE the supranational currency was launched. These included a single Europe-wide election for the Parliament and elections for organized civil society in the three consultative committees.

For example the Economic and Social Committee should have elected representatives from European Business, Workers and Consumers associations. They should not be chosen from national groups at the whim of politicians for political favours back home. A really European Consultative Committee would supervise any plans for a currency. They would use their powers given them in the legislative process.

A properly elected Committee of Regions would supervise and actively be part of legislation about regional and national disparities and unemployment, as well as migrations issues. These bodies are still the play things of politicians, whether national or European. They are not independent bodies.

Instead the euro has been foisted on the public without the necessary democratic development repeated in all the treaties from that of Paris to Lisbon. Who created the euro? Politicians! But as any student of monetary economics knows the management of the money system should be run by an independent institution, supervised by another independent body, and should NEVER be put in the hands of politicians especially those who have shown themselves unable to balance their own budget or run the economy according to the rules.

Nobel3: EU Council's brazen Nobel Expo Fraud: General de Gaulle originated Europe's peace!!

At the December European Summit, the political leaders announced an exhibition with a brazen propaganda falsification about Peace in Europe. It contradicts what the Nobel Foundation said that the EU and its forerunners had brought ‘more than six decades of peace‘.

That apparently was a great shock for Europe’s leaders! On 10 December 2012 the Nobel Peace Prize  was awarded to  the EU and received in Oslo by Mr Herman van Rompuy of the European Council, Mr Barroso of the European Commission and Mr Schulz of the European Parliament.
All of them had simply ignored or rewritten their history. It was too dangerously democratic!

• The European Commission did not celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of its first meeting on 10 August 2012.
• On 11 September 2012 the European Parliament did not celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of its first assembly under the presidency of Paul-Henri Spaak. It did not get any mention even though the EP was in session in Strasbourg. Mr Barroso gave his State of the Union speech. He passed over that event in silence and that Spaak created a special assembly to form a European Political Community, exactly 60 years before. (It was sabotaged by Gaullists.) Mr Barroso announced the logically impossible goal of a Federation of Nation States. Meanwhile in the Paul-Henri Spaak building in Brussels, cracks in the ceiling of the parliamentary hemicycle put it out of action for more than a year.
• The Council of Ministers did not celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of its first meeting on 8 September 2012.The Council initially met on 18 April 1951 at the signing of the Treaty of Paris and the Great Charter. Both required all future developments of this supranational Community to be based by the ‘free will of the people.’ De Gaulle buried this Charter. Who knows about it today?

The official website of the Council still falsely announces that the European Union began in 1958 — the date of the seizure of power of General de Gaulle. How is it that the Schuman Proposal was made on 9 May 1950 and brought about a democratic system with five independent institutions? How long will the Council try to out-Goebbels the Nazi propaganda chief by repeating lies?

Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Thorbjørn Jagland said peace in Europe was built by means of :

‘a binding commitment. It had to build on human rights, democracy, and enforceable principles of the rule of law. And on economic cooperation aimed at making the countries equal partners in the European marketplace. By these means the countries would be bound together so as to make new wars impossible. The Coal and Steel Community of 1951 marked the start of a process of reconciliation which has continued right to the present day.’ He was referring to supranational values like honesty, anti-corruption measures, openness, public debate about tax and budget and truth.

Released at the European Summit, the Council’s official brochure for the Nobel Peace Prize celebration is a gross perversion of history and truth. It distorts how Europe’s peace suddenly happened — when everyone expected continuous war for the future. The brochure announces the exhibition ‘The European Union working for peace‘ that opens on 18 December to 15 February.

Who made peace in Europe possible?
General Charles de Gaulle !!! His photo dominates the brochure. De Gaulle???

• Yes , the same French autocratic General who wanted Spain’s autocrat Generalissimo Franco to join the Common Market and excluded democratic Norway, Ireland, Denmark and the UK! It also excluded Cyprus and Malta who had applied.
• Yes, General de Gaulle who blackmailed by the ‘Empty Chair policy‘ the other Member States to accept a Common Agricultural Policy where European secretly subsidized French farmers above all. The Council shut its doors firmly closed to the taxpayers. It created the present unacceptable ‘package deals’ system of the Lisbon Treaty were the European citizen is milked without any democratic right to refuse.
• Yes, de Gaulle who refused in 1959 the European Parliament’s demand (and Robert Schuman’s as its President) to end to the Parliament’s odyssey and have a single seat for Europe’s institutions in Brussels.
• Yes, de Gaulle who hegemonicly tried to seize the levers of power through the 1961-2 Fouchet Plan. His French policy was to dominate all the other countries as the only A-Bomb power and UN Security Council member. Schuman wanted equality of Member States. (Paul-Henri Spaak denounced the plan, declaring that ‘Europe of tomorrow must be a supranational (democratic) Europe.’)
• Yes, de Gaulle who after his outrageous attacks on Community Europe had a mass resignation of Europhile, democratic ministers in 1962. In reaction de Gaulle formed the Franco-German axis with the 1963 Treaty of Elysee, to the protest of the Europeans including Jean Monnet and Walter Hallstein and numerous other Franco-German deputies. They insisted on an anti-Gaullist preamble. Two months later on 29 March 1963 the European Parliament reaffirmed its attachment to ‘A supranational and democratic  Community based on the equality of rights of the Member States provided with its own institutions independent of the governments.’

Of all the leaders of Europe, the real Founding Fathers, the Council chose a photo of de Gaulle, who opposed the Founding Fathers like Poher, Rochefort, Mollet, Pleven, Monnet, Spaak, Bech, Luns, van Zeeland and so on. Adenauer opposed de Gaulle at first and all his anti-European and anti-Nato policies but eventually submitted to his wily politics because he wanted to tie BRD Germany to the West and avoid the reunification with the Soviet-dominated DDR. However de Gaulle wanted to create a DDR-style Gaullist Politburo in the Council of Ministers to dominate West Europe. We have it still today.

De Gaulle is shown shaking hands with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in January 1963. No other names are mentioned. So the Great French Autocrat must be responsible for making ‘war not only unthinkable but materially impossible‘. Is the Council now openly declaring it is the Bastion of Gaullism? Who wrote this nonsense? Obviously not a 68-ter with a functioning memory who was involved in the anarchic riots in France that nearly brought the country to total impotence at de Gaulle’s autocratic, paternalistic ways. Paternalism or autocracy treats all other citizens as children. De Gaulle tried to bring the same anarchy to Europe so that he could divide and rule.

Supranational means that politicians should be honest and that the people should be free to choose as defined in Europe’s Founding Charter. Thanks to the Gaullists in the French Foreign Ministry this European Charter was buried and lost in the archives for sixty years.

Why is de Gaulle singled out in the Council’s extraordinary affront to history? Few people as much as Charles de Gaulle opposed the Community system that brought peace in Europe — the supranational Community system. Here’s what de Gaulle told Alain Peyrefitte, his confident and Minister of Information, about his secrets aimed at destroying the European Community.
In July 1960 — after the signature of the Treaties of Rome in 1957 — General de Gaulle told Peyrefitte:

‘Alfred Fabre Luce has just written that now that the French have shown the proof over the last two centuries that they have been incapable of governing themselves, supranational integration is going to allow the Germans to teach them organisation and discipline. All that is monstrous! Monstrous!’

When he conducted Peyrefitte to the door, General de Gaulle asked him to write a policy paper on the practical means to stifle supranationality. He explained that his policy so far to emphasize nationalism through the Pan-Europe movement (emphasizing a utopian Federation of Nations) was not succeeding. He needed greater means to activate and feed the major newspapers with more powerful anti-Community (that is anti-democratic) propaganda.

Peyrefritte  said: ‘It entails precisely creating situations where we can only get out of them by raising the dose of supranationality‘ (that is improving democracy at a European level).
De Gaulle replied: ‘That’s what we don’t want! That won’t do. That would be gross stupidity. Of the two treaties of Rome, I do not know which of them is the most dangerous! The Treaty on Euratom is worse that useless. — It is pernicious. I ask myself if we should not denounce it openly. And then there is the Common Market. It is a customs union, which can help us, provided that we realize a common agricultural policy, which is not instituted there, and several other common policies, which are not even mentioned.

Thus Europe got one of its great scandals of intergovernmental corruption: the Wine Lakes,  Meat Mountains, and the useless infrastructure projects  that were paid for by the European taxpayer to help de Gaulle garner in French voters to his party. No wonder the Greeks and others were so keen to join the same corrupt deals.

De Gaulle continued: ‘But the Common Market also includes (democratic) pretensions, that they call ‘supranational potentialities‘ (European democracy) which are not acceptable for us. ‘Supranationality that’s absurd! Nothing is above the nations, how then can nations decide together! The pretensions of the Commissioners of Brussels who want to give orders to the governments are ridiculous! Ridiculous!‘

De Gaulle thus showed himself to be a man of vision — a vision of returning to the nineteenth century of national conflict, the unstable ‘balance of power’ politics trying to crush opposing powers and resulting inevitably in bloody warfare. He wanted to put a stranglehold on Western Germany against what he called the Anglo-Saxons and the Soviet Union. He was willing to compromise European defence by kicking NATO headquarters out of France (that Schuman had arranged) and sabotaging the 1952 European Defence Community and the Council of Europe and its Human Rights system. For all these postwar achievements, Europeans owe a great deal to Robert Schuman.

Peyrefitte suggested that they make the supranational democracy inoperable in the two treaties of Rome but also attack the Treaty of Paris of the Coal and Steel Community — which had an even stronger dose of supranationality.

The Coal and Steel Community aimed at creating a strong, competitive energy and steel industry was eventually dropped after 50 years of service. Today we see Europe’s steel industry in catastrophic decline and the whole continent blackmailed by energy cartels with a vicious ulterior foreign policy motive. In those days oil was sold for around a dollar a barrel. Today it is priced at anything from 100 to 147 dollars!Today Europeans are calling again for Coal and Steel Community institutions to save industries from oblivion!

What a man of vision de Gaulle was!

Peyrefitte prepared a policy for de Gaulle about the practical means to stifle supranationality. His policies were pursued by de Gaulle including the Fouchet Plan to turn the European Commission into a Gaullist secretariat.

Unfortunately for de Gaulle and Peyrefitte, due to a clerical error, one of his texts was released to pro-European members of the Liberal faction in the European Parliament. A scandal broke out.
When Georges Pompidou presented his first Gaullist government to the French National Assembly he was met with stiff opposition. This is how Jean Legendre, deputy from Compiegne, hammered the policy to delight of all the deputies except the Gaullist UNR party. He said:

‘Mr Prime Minister we don’t know your ideas but we know those of Alain Peyrefitte who kindly sent us a note two years ago. In this he explained how the policy was to ‘deactivate the federal potentialities of the treaties of Rome‘ and to ‘chloroform Euratom‘. Well let me tell you, these ideas are exactly contrary to ours! We want to activate the federal potentialities of the treaty of Rome! We want supranationality! We want the United States of Europe! We will fight you if you try to damage it in any way!’

Peyrefitte said the UNR were in consternation as all the other benches gave this speech thunderous applause.

So it is with some public incredulity that the European Council and Council of Ministers dared to impose the history that illegitimately brought them massive corruption against the citizens of Europe. The financial crisis has brought Europe to the chasm of ruin today. The politicians need to learn supranational values like openness and honesty. The Council and the European Council should be open for all to see what goes on and the Commission should be composed of honest men and women who refuse to have any membership of political parties as the treaties insist. Instead, intoxicated still with Gaullist techniques over the years, the Council can not even discern the lies it has been spouting from the truth it has to present as real history.

‘For over six decades,’ says the brochure, ‘the European Union and its forerunners have contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe and beyond.’ Who and what were the forerunners? No idea!

According to the brochure, wars suddenly stopped because they kept recurring and World War II demonstrated the need for a new Europe’ !

Apparently all  it took was for General de Gaulle shake hands with Konrad Adenauer!
The Council has lost all credibility. This is an additional reason why the Nobel Prize should not have been awarded to an organization that denies its own history. They are as short-sighted as they are corrupters of facts and tax.

And where does the exhibition on peace take place? On a corner between the Council and the Commission buildings on the Robert Schuman Roundabout!!

Jihad6: EU should not be fooled by UN's pro-Hamas distortions

Israelis and Gazans have agreed a ceasefire on 21 November 2012. Apart from several Gazan rockets it is generally holding. That shows that WHEN IT WANTS TO the Hamas regime in Gaza is able to control the other terrorist groups. Thus the escalation of missiles towards Israel over this entire year and before is part of official Hamas policy.

The European Community was founded on a Compact that said that it should follow supranational values like TRUTH. That applies to the EU’s foreign policy as much as its internal affairs. The European External Action Service should take note!

Article 2 of the Hamas Covenant declares it is the military arm of the Muslim Brotherhood aimed at worldwide Sharia law with ‘death for Allah the highest aspiration‘. It has global aims and is the largest Muslim organization in the world. Article 4 says it is a part of a secret movement and Article 7 says it is a world movement aimed at the armed conversion of the world to its brand of jihadist Islam. This article says it goal is the destruction of all Jews and Zionists.

Do you believe them? They name their missiles after ‘Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam, whom they describe as a martyr. Are you sure, is the External Action Service convinced,  that Hamas forces men, women and children to die as human shields to cover their evil? ‘We desire death like you desire life,‘ they say.

Will Hamas keep to this agreement and stop all future violence? If it doesn’t, how will Europe be hit? What about the Iranian involvement that threatens Europe’s drug of predilection — OIL?
As of November 20, 2012, the number of rockets and mortars fired at Israeli civilians from Gaza for 2012 stood at over 2,000. More than three million Israelis live within range of rocket and mortar attacks that have been going on for years. They live in and near bomb shelters. No other democracy in the world would tolerate such attacks.

In a recent barrage of several hundred rockets, more than one hundred fell short and exploded in the Gaza strip itself.  What was the damage, wounding and deaths caused by them? You don’t know? You will not find out from Hamas, as it is a terrorist group. Nor from the United Nations, which supposedly isn’t. Hamas and other terrorist groups fire missiles especially from its civilian areas and use the population as human shields for black propaganda purposes, should Israel strike back. Those Gazans who are killed by Gazan missiles are either too unimportant to be recorded or attributed to Israeli action.

You will not learn the facts from the United Nations. They do not tell us that, by its carefully targeted air attacks, Israel has destroyed nearly all of the Iranian Fajr rockets that the UN was supposed to prevent coming into Gaza. Fajr rockets were aimed at Jerusalem (which some Muslim Brotherhood colleagues of Mr Morsi want to be the capital of Egypt) and Tel Aviv. The United Nations has betrayed the mandate that the nations of the world recorded to return Israel to Jews and Israelites that was agreed after World War One.  Instead it is now dominated by politicians and ideologues who speak about ‘Palestine‘ (a nation that NEVER existed in modern times) and the rights of so-called ‘ Palestinians‘ who identify themselves to each other as Arabs from Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

On the border between Egypt and Gaza, the European Union has ‘observers’ at the Rafah crossing on the Philadelphi route used by smugglers and terrorists. What are these EU observers telling the public about the smuggling of powerful Iranian missiles into the Gaza powder-keg?
What do you know about a situation that might bring not only the Near East but Europe into flames? Is the EU doing its job or is it following the dishonest lead of the United Nations — silence on anything that might put the terrorists of Hamas into a bad light? According to an Arab journalist, there are some six hundred millionaires in Gaza, made rich on such exploitation. Hamas receives its heavy cut of all this illegal trade.

The United Nations is supposed to be provide impartial information. But does it? Has it become so close to Hamas, a terrorist organization, that it fears to criticize the deaths caused by its suicidal and anti-Israel policies?

Below is my letter to Mr Matthias Burchard, Director to the EU of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, responsible for the Arab refugees in the area who refuse to be resettled.

Thank you, Mr Burchard, for this report on the situation in Gaza.

As a journalist, like many others, who try to understand and analyze the situation in Gaza, I and my colleagues will find this sort of report one-sided. For example there is no mention of the total number of rockets and missiles launched at Israel from inside the Gaza strip. Two only are mentioned aimed at Tel Aviv. No internal problems related to Gazan missile production and launching of Iranian missiles inside Gaza are mentioned.

The United Nations is supposed to represent all its Member States. That must include Israel. A number of Jews and Arabs who were refugees under UNRWA were successfully integrated into Israeli society. That was many years ago but it indicates that UNRWA is not meant to be a pro-Hamas, one-sided propaganda vehicle.
But even if it were only representing the inhabitants or the Hamas regime of Gaza etc UNRWA should give a balanced view of the news. Journalists can find out what is going on by viewing or reading the news or subscribing to other sources such as the one from The Israel Project which shows the massive stockpiling of arms in Gaza and use of human shields by the Hamas regime. These are major humanitarian problems. I include one report below.

Over the time that I have been receiving UNRWA reports there has been no information about the smuggling of rockets and Iranian missiles into Gaza, nor about their launching nearly a thousand recently. No mention  is made of the fact that Israel is maintaining electricity supplies to Gaza and also supplying food and consumer goods, when it could easily cut these off, given the Jihadist or ‘militant’ missile attacks.

Thus the credibility of UNRWA and the United Nations is undermined by such one sided reports. I hope that you will endeavour to provide more balanced information in the future.

Regards,
David Price
Editor,
Bron Communications

November 17, 2012 Contact: TIP Press: press@theisraelproject.org Main Office Phone Number:   202-857-6644  Iran-backed Hamas has turned hospitals, homes, schools, and mosques into military bases loaded with snipers and weapons. Dozens of videos show how they use Palestinian civilians for human shields and Palestinian residential areas as depots.  We’ve embedded five videos below. Click on the photos to go straight to the videos, or click on the link below to go to TIP’s YouTube collection on Hamas’s war crimes. Terrorists firing Rockets from Civilian areas in Gaza (YouTube / http://is.gd/bkNTAb ) Hamas hides behind civilians and shows it on Palestinian TV (YouTube / http://is.gd/XXoTYn ) Hamas – Human Shield Confession (YouTube / http://is.gd/kV5o9K ) Hamas Hides Fajr-5 Rocket in Underground Launch Site in Gaza ( YouTube / http://is.gd/ulsKDS ) Human Shield – Cynical Use of Children ( YouTube / http://is.gd/OgUAFg ) TIP’s Collection On Hamas’s Human Shields The Israel Project is a non-profit educational organization that provides factual information about Israel and the Middle East to the press, policy makers and the public.

Below is UNRWA REPORT
UNRWA Room DC1-1265 United Nations | New York, NY 10017 US

UNRWA 24-hour update as of 16 november 2012 at 15:00 situational overview GAZA: FACTS AND FIGURES • 1.2 million refugees • 8 refugee camps • 12,000 staff • 245 schools for 225,000 students • 21 health centres • 12 food distribution centres for more than 800,000 refugees • Living under a tightened land and sea blockade since 2007 • Shattered local economy URGENT FUNDING NEED • Food assistance: USD 4.8 million The Israeli military operation continues for the second consecutive day. Widespread Israeli air strikes have been taking place for the past 24 hours. Over 60 Israeli Air Force (IAF) raids, with over 100 missiles fired, accompanied by very loud explosions, were reported for the period 01:00hrs – 07:20hrs only. A ground operation has not been launched. UNRWA is ready and prepared should the humanitarian need dictate a response. Militants have continued intensive rocket and mortar firing into southern Israeli territory, including two rockets fired into the area of Tel Aviv for the first time since the Gulf War. The streets in Gaza appear to be almost empty with a very small number of vehicles or people. People are limiting movements to a minimum, and whenever possible also avoid places that have been repeatedly targeted. Shops are mainly closed with the exception of some food stores, and bakeries are crowded with people stocking up on supplies. Waiting time at bakeries is up to one hour. It will become clear tomorrow whether the closure of the shops is linked to the security situation or to the fact that both yesterday and today were official holidays. There is great concern among the population about shortages should the current situation last or get worse. Police reminded vegetable sellers to keep prices down, as there were reports about some of them using the emergency situation to raise prices. Reports say that the tunnels at the Egyptian border were closed last night. However, large amounts of flour, 200,000 litres of diesel, and 100,000 litres of industrial fuel for the Gaza power plant have come in today through the tunnels for the de facto authority’s stores. No large-scale displacement has been reported and there is not yet any need for the provision of emergency humanitarian assistance. So far, displaced people are able to find shelter with friends and family. Displacements are mainly due to damage done to houses and apartments caused by nearby air strikes. No large-scale displacement has yet been reported and there is not yet any need for the provision of emergency humanitarian assistance. Concern over the availability of fuel for the population has been reported. unrwa’s response As the security situation escalates, UNRWA is ready to respond. As in the past, displaced refugees and other civilians in Gaza are likely to seek shelter in UNRWA schools across the Gaza Strip. The Agency and its staff are ready to provide assistance as required.  DOWNLOAD REPORT Given the security situation, wherever possible UNRWA health centres will operate as of tomorrow morning. Health teams are ready to provide emergency assistance, including establishing temporary or mobile clinics in the eventuality of large-scale population displacements. UNRWA’s main pharmacy and health centres have sufficient medicine and vaccinations in stock. As the largest UN agency in Gaza with the largest number of beneficiaries, UNRWA is hoping to augment its existing supplies of non-food items for distribution to refugees and other civilians as necessary. UNRWA distributes food aid to more than 800,000 refugees in Gaza and is currently in the middle of a food distribution cycle (October to December). The Agency food stocks are therefore plentiful. However, any food that is distributed as an emergency humanitarian response measure to a displaced population will need to be replaced to cover the food needs of the current number of poor Palestine refugees in Gaza. UNRWA is also currently facing a funding shortfall of USD 4.8 million, which is needed by next week to complete the procurement procedures for the distribution of food aid scheduled to take place from January to March 2013. security The security situation in Gaza remains critical. Widespread air bombardments from Israel across the Gaza Strip and large-scale rocket and mortar fire from Gaza into Israeli territory is causing Palestinian and Israeli civilian casualties. For the first time since the first Gulf War, rockets were fired into the area of Tel Aviv.  A three-hour-long ceasefire was arranged during the visit of Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil to Gaza and came into force at 09:00. Only sporadic air strikes and rocket firing were reported during that time. Military activities resumed after 12:00. challenges encountered The Department of Safety and Security and the UN Access team organised an NGO convoy with six expatriate workers to leave Gaza this morning. Once again, the crossing point on the Palestinian side (Arba Arba) was closed by the local authorities. Erez crossing was open until 13:00 and ready to allow the expatriate workers through. Despite the co-ordination efforts, the convoy did not manage to leave Gaza today. unrwa casualties No reported casualties from UNRWA staff in the reporting period, though an UNRWA teacher was killed by an Israeli air strike on 15 November. An eight-year-old UNRWA student, Fares Al Basuni, was killed at his home in Beit Hanoun. unrwa installations On 14 November at 21:25, an Israeli air strike hit an open area northeast of Rafah, causing minor damage to Al Naser Health Centre. On 14 November at 17:45, an Israeli air strike hit an open area southwest of Nuseirat Camp, causing minor damage to UNRWA’s Nuseirat preparatory girls’ school. On 14 November at 21:15 an Israeli air strike hit an open area northwest of Nuseirat Camp, causing damage to an UNRWA vehicle. On 16 November at 04:05 an Israeli air strike hit an open area, causing collateral damage to the UNRWA’s Japanese Health Centre in Khan Younis. On 16 November at 05:40 an Israeli air strike targeting a civil administration building, belonging to the Ministry of Interior in Tel El Hawa, southeast of Gaza, caused collateral damage to UNRWA Zaitoun girls’ school. crossings Rafah crossing is open as usual. Kerem Shalom was closed on 15 November due to the security situation. On 16 November, Kerem Shalom was closed as usual. Erez crossing was open until 13:00 for those walking across. However, local authorities in Gaza did not allow expatriate workers to leave Gaza.

UNRWA Room DC1-1265 United Nations | New York, NY 10017 USA

SUPRA2: After 60 years France releases Europe's Foundational Charter of Supranational Democracy

The foundation stone  of European Law and Democracy has been revealed at last! Below is a copy of the key institutional document of European democracy that politicians have refused to publish for decades. It may not have been seen for SIXTY years. Now it needs to be fully integrated into European codes of Law and jurisprudence.

On 18 April 1951 the the Europe Declaration was signed by all the representatives of the six founding Member State Governments of the European Community. It creates the Foundation of a New Europe which made 'war not only unthinkable but materially impossible'. It provided a path as it says to create a new common destiny so Europeans could look forward to a peaceful future both of prosperity but also be forced to resolve peacefully common problems together and, despite the corruption and perversities of human nature, arrive together at moral and ethical solutions.

 In his book, Pour l'Europe (p146), Robert Schuman called it the great Charter of Europe's Community. After its signature and that of the Treaty of Paris founding the European Community for Coal and Steel, it was then placed for safekeeping in the archives of the French Foreign Ministry at the Quai d'Orsay, Paris.

It contains the pledge of European Governments that all European Community future Treaties founding new Community organizations, all Acts and Laws arising from them would follow certain principles. This includes such things as supranational values, like honesty, justice and truth. It pledged that all citizens would have to give full democratic agreement to any future developments.

General de Gaulle was no friend of the European Community and tried to destroy it. The Europe Declaration of Interdependence may have been buried in the archives at this time. It contains the word de Gaulle hated: SUPRANATIONAL, meaning that dictators would find no place in a democratic Community of democratic Member States. He wanted to replace the independent European Commission searching out the common good and just solutions with a secretariat subservient to his own political views (Fouchet Plan and the crisis of the Empty Chair).

Democratic politicians in other countries together with democrats in France fought off this plan for Gaullist hegemony of the Continent.   Yet politicians after de Gaulle never published this foundational document, nor developed the Community's democratic institutions to any great extent. Referendums were avoided or simply disdained.

The Community's democratic and supranational principles have been ignored in recent developments including the construction of the euro. This is based on economics of national currencies strung inadequately together by international agreement of politicians, not the people. The Community system envisages a European Currency controlled by a properly elected European Parliament under a single electoral statute and organized civil society in a fully elected Economic and Social Committee.

 After being hidden in the archives of the Quai d'Orsay for sixty years, ignored and kept secret from the public by politicians, this Foundational Declaration has now been released by the French Government, following a request by the Schuman Project. It is now published on its site www.schuman.info/CharterQdO.htm

     

Supra1: Supranational values create the 'Grand Bargain' of Europe, not party oligarchs or markets.

The former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has called for a ‘Grand Bargain’ to set Europe on the right track. Part of his idea, said Mr Blair, speaking in Berlin at the Council for the Future of Europe on 29 October 2012, is the election of the President of the European Commission.

‘My feeling is that the only way, ultimately, confidence can be restored is with a fully comprehensive set of measures that convince markets and public alike that the fundamental issues have been overcome.’

The first major mistake of this analysis relates to the true foundation of European construction. It is a supranational institution.

• It is not based on pleasing the markets.
• Europe cannot be built on money like the euro (even if it were well-constructed and it isn’t).
• Nor can it be built on commercial activity (even if the EU is the largest commercial power in the world, equivalent to the USA, Canada and India).
• It cannot even be built on some ideological concept of democracy. (Ideology means part truth).

Putting the Commission into the hands of politicians by elections, organized and controlled by political parties, is completely wrong. It would exclude 98 percent of the population who are not members of political parties. It is the road to disaster. It violates the most elementary principles of Human Rights. A fairer, more just and honest idea is required.

Europe must be founded on truth and the search for truth. Truth can be arrived at by experience, examining one’s conscience and investigation. That is the only realistic basis for a sound society. Experience tells us that politicians should not be given absolute control, that their  declarations should be examined by ordinary citizens and interest groups in non-political representative bodies. Their conclusions should be published and examined conscientiously by all the public.

That is because all human beings have a tendency to corrupt and putting known corrupters in charge of anti-corruption is to corrupt the system absolutely.

Appeasing corruption is no formula for resolving the present crisis, nor for the future. AT THE MOMENT POLITICIANS ARE FAR TOO KEEN TO OBSCURE CORRUPTION RATHER THAN EXPOSE IT AND CORRECT IT.

European integration can only be founded on values like fairness, justice and honesty. Schuman called these supranational values because, in the past, empires, federations and confederations have collapsed because of violation of justice and the rule of law. Science properly founded on correct premises is a supranational value, said Schuman. Its results were true in antiquity (even if not always recognized). It is true today. As Schuman learned in his university days, justice decided in the court systems of ancient societies tended to follow similar rules to modern justice. Societies also failed when, as contemporary critics observed, corruption replaced justice or when sexual depravity became commonplace. Today lack of trust in politicians does not justify giving them more powers.

It is true that Europe needs to defend itself externally from predatory and dangerous powers that would like to exploit its disunity. That idea is not new. Schuman said that precisely in his address to the United Nations General Assembly in 1948: ‘Europe must unite to survive.’ Europeans have fought each other for thousands of years and disunity is more natural than unity.

What is important for us now is how the foundation based on supranational values can be developed. These values form the basis for European democracies. They arose from Christian basis of our civilization but also present in other successful societies too.
Should Europeans fear the future? Should they chase after the chimera of exploitative wealth?

Mr Blair says: ‘The 21st Century case for Europe is based not on war or peace but on power or irrelevance. A 21st Century with China and India that in time, as GDP and population size realign, will become vast economic and political powers.’

Where this analysis is wrong is that ALL civilizations will fail if they cannot handle the problem of corruption. This is true not only for China, India and Europe but also for Russia and other rising, populous states including the super-rich but corrupt oil powers of the Middle East. What is relevant is building on a sound foundation, not coveting immoral and unethical practices that seem to bring instant wealth. Peace, which Europe gained by the Community, can continue to bring vast improvement in technical and moral progress, when the real keys of the supranational system are  honestly applied.

Where Mr Blair makes a further fundamental mistake is to ignore the fact that a Grand Bargain has already been made. It is the politicians too often who are responsible for not holding to it. Take for instance the European Commission. Mr Blair says it should be elected. That sounds fair. But it is not what the Grand Bargain of 18 April 1951 to put an end to war made actually says.  Electing the President would throw the whole procedure into the hands of the political parties who have a near monopoly of putting up candidates. It would reinforce the party political control of the institutions. Within the main political parties a small group of party officials decides on who should be candidate. Thus the whole process puts the presidency of the Commission into the hands of party machines and a few apparatchiks who decide.

This is an oligarchic system and has great dangers. It does not oppose antidemocratic attitudes of fellow politicians. The European Council would reinforce its undemocratic meetings of all and everything in secret. The ultra-secret Eurozone group would cook up lawless schemes to bilk the public of trillions of euros. No democratic control is possible. The Commission becomes fully complicit in any corruption. The independence of the Commission from governments, and from political parties and from any commercial, industrial or other interest group, is fundamental to the Community system.

The word ‘supranational’ appears twice in Europe’s founding treaty and in subsequent treaties like the European Political Community and Defence Community.

This proposal of Mr Blair is directly opposite to what the original Grand Bargain entailed. So what was the Grand Bargain of 18 April 1951?  It provided a way to end war between Member States. It created FIVE mutually independent institutions to safeguard this bargain and to build the future. By separately analyzing and then cross-checking the proposal of an impartial Commission (alone able to propose legislation), the most democratically fair bargain could be struck to provide the basis for European laws, taxes and budgets.

1. The European Commission must be (a) INDEPENDENT and (b) represent Europe not national interests or in fact not be tied to any interest group at all. The Commission must be impartial. Therefore the selection of the future Commissioners must be made by a process that would avoid political corruption or the election of those representing special interests.

2. The Commission should be in permanent dialogue with a consultative body representing Organized Civil Society. These Consultative Committees should be elected equally from three lists of European professional organizations representing workers, consumers and entrepreneurs. There should also be elections for the Committee of Regions and the Euratom Committees. These Consultative Committees have full powers in the preparation and supervision of all European legislation.

3. The Council of Ministers should be held in OPEN sessions. There should be no taxation without full and appropriate debate both inside the Council and also in the national parliaments.

4. The European Parliament should be elected according to a single statute for all the territory of the European Union. There should no longer be 27 national elections where the government parties bias the rules in favour of their own political parties. (Under the Lisbon Treaty the Parliament gave up its prime weapon for democracy — the ability to sack the Commission.)

5. The Court of Justice should be composed of impartial judges who are open to all tribunals and courts for their ruling on the interpretation of European law.

The most solemn part of the Great Bargain of 18 April 1951 was that no European measure should be brought in WITHOUT THE WHOLE-HEARTED AGREEMENT OF THE EUROPEAN PEOPLES. It is called the Great Charter of Europe, its Declaration of Interdependence.

This is not what has happened in Europe recently where we have seen treaties brought in by secretive cabals of politicians, meeting in the dead of night in European Councils. These treaties are not OPEN nor are they agreed freely by the people. They are as legitimate as the measures brought in by the Politburos of the so-called ‘People’s Democracies’ of the Soviet era. Worse, the politicians went ahead even though, in the few referendums that the politicians permitted, the public of several nations pronounced decisively against them. Then the politicians changed the system so that no further referendums would be permitted, especially in the founder States who knew exactly what abuses had been committed by de Gaulle and others!

The Great Charter said that the Community was the TRUE FOUNDATION of an organized Europe. It was declared as the first instance of a supranational organization in the world. It was a Community of peoples (not political groups). It set as prime condition that the people must be ‘FREE TO CHOOSE’. The first measure of renewing the Grand Bargain is to republish this Great Charter. It is the first Statute of European Law.

Mr Blair said: ‘I bear the scars of participation in the Amsterdam Treaty, the Nice Treaty, the – Laeken process culminating in the Lisbon Treaty and the 2005 EU budget negotiation, when the UK held the Presidency –  the most difficult negotiation I participated in, (even including the Northern Ireland peace agreement.) Many of those here today bear similar scars! ‘

The politicians are likely to get many more scars until they learn their lessons about the real foundations of European democracy.