Election7: Politicians' Ministry of Truth 'FORGETS' to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of Europe's DEMOCRACY

Did Europe's politicians forget? Today 11 September 2012 is the sixtieth anniversary of the first assembly of the European Parliament.

Guess who was the first president? None other than Paul-Henri Spaak. Yes, the same one after whom the Paul-Henri Spaak building of the European Parliament is named. It is difficult for the MEPs to forget the name. It houses the Hemicycle, the main debating chamber plus scads of other conference and committee rooms. But the MEPs 'forgot' to celebrate the very central democratic reason why they have a building boasting Spaak's name. They 'forgot' to celebrate why they have a job and a handsome salary.

Spaak's Presidency has been written out of the politicians' history on flawed and erroneous site of europa.eu However those interested in the principles and roots of democracy can find details of Spaak on Wikipedia or good history books. The importance of the Spaak presidency is underlined when it is realized that in just a couple of days of action, Spaak had created a special Assembly (the Ad Hoc Assembly) to draft the European Political Community, based on supranational democracy. The Council of Ministers had asked the Assembly of the Coal and Steel Community to help draft the architecture for a democratic Europe. Irony indeed. The Council today would do no such thing even with a partially elected European Parliament. By writing Spaak out the political fraudsters now in the European Parliament are trying to write out democratic history so the public does not question present Politburo politics. George Orwell, the author of the anti-totalitarian novel 1984, must be turning over in his grave! Today we have much more than a Ministry of Truth.

Did the MEPs really forget the date? Well it should be a date that is important for all democrats. We are told Democracy is now being talked of again. Confidence and trust in European politicians reached an all time low recently according to Eurobarometer polls. Trust in the EP fell from 56% in 2007 to 46% last year. Trust in the Commission, the ECB (both 36%) and Council (31%) plumeted.) Can a currency survive without the people's trust?

Now is the time to emphasize democracy, say the politicians. Is that what the present Politburo system is all about? The fact that they 'forgot' indicates that the political powers are not really interested except for a thin veneer of democracy. They can decide policy behind closed doors. They want the public to agree this is democracy. They live in a dreamworld that invents its own fraudulent history. They think a political cartel can run not only European politics but cheat the money markets.

That goes for not only 'normal' EU expenditure but now the money-crazed little outfit called the Eurogroup (which isn't an institution of the EU) and its totally extra-Treaty Big Brother Eurogroup composed of heads of government. They want to grab hold of between FIVE and SEVEN times the EU budget to cover over the financial misdeeds and crimes of their political co-conspirators of the mammoth EURO FRAUD. All Member States politicians were active or passive culprits in this misuse of European money to cover skyrocketing debts, political backhanders and falsified statistics. The public is then asked to claim 'ownership' of the Council Diktat. No democracy, no legal system. Generations into the future will have to pay for this fraud. The poor suffer most from political duplicity. The European Central Bank, whose head was chosen in secret with no other candidates able to apply, is now a willing and profligate partner with YOUR money, throwing good money after bad to help crooks and a crooked system.

Did the Parliamentarians really forget? Six months ago I mentioned this important date to several MEPs including a former President of the European Parliament. No action.

Yesterday, one of the leaders of the major political groups told me that the question had never arisen to his knowledge among any of the joint meetings with the other groups.

So why did they all REFUSE to mark the date?

Well they are not alone.

• On 10 August 2012 the Commission REFUSED to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the first meeting of Commission /High Authority of the first Community. Jean Monnet was its first President as the Europa site reminds us all. Mr Barroso's spokesperson said they were too busy to remember such dates!
• On 18 April 2011 the Council of Ministers REFUSED to celebrate the first meeting of the Council that signed the FIRST treaty of the EU, the European Community of Coal and Steel. It and the other institutions refused to publish the great European Charter of Democracy that says that no measures, no laws and no treaties can be passed without the full-hearted consent of the European peoples. This legal document forbids any treaty -- such as the Constitutional Treaty or the Treaty of Lisbon to be passed and considered law without the peoples' consent. The Charter was signed as a legal document to prevent any state or the Community as a whole from being governed by a Politburo as was then the case of the People's Democracies in Central and Eastern Europe.
• On 8 September 2012 the Council of Ministers -- and indeed the European Council its bosses -- REFUSED to celebrate the first meeting of the Council under Europe's first treaty. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of Germany was the first president of the Council.
• The Consultative Committees first met on 26 January 1953. It is not known whether they will mark this occasion.
• The European Court of Justice of the EU will mark the event of their opening session in December. After all lawyers cannot write off their history as easy as politicians. Case law has dates on them.

The Council of Europe is not afraid to celebrate its history. It celebrated the sixtieth anniversary in 2009. What happened in European history after 1949 ?

Well, firstly we must turn to the Constitutional Treaty and then the Treaty of Lisbon, which apart from the removal of the European Flag and anthem, is basically identical. The public in several countries realized that the Constitutional Treaty was not either a Community system or fair. They voted it down in France, the Netherlands in May-June 2005. It failed before a further referendum with an expected No in Ireland, UK and elsewhere could be held. Instead the text as the Treaty of Lisbon was forced through by regimented political parties in the national parliaments. Countries which had promised a referendum, REFUSED to have one. No one else was asked what they thought of it. And if they did, the Council did not care. This is called the Politburo method. The European Parliament to its lasting shame refused to demand the full text of the document before they approved it, like sheep to the slaughter. It removes Parliament's power to dismiss the Commission.

In 2007-8 in order even to get the Member State parliaments to vote for a document that was not available as a full-text, the Council spent an enormous amount of money in a Public Relations campaign. Where did the PR money come from? You guessed it -- the European tax-payer. The Council decided to CELEBRATE the anniversary of the European Union. Unfortunately there was only 1957 to celebrate. It was NOT the anniversary of the EU. It was merely the anniversary of the second and third Communities of the Treaties of Rome, the Economic Community and Euratom, for nuclear security, anti-proliferation and energy independence (little mentioned).

So 1957 became the Politburo 'BIRTHDAY' of Europe. The Parliament -- which was composed of spineless yes-men and women agreed. They celebrated their fiftieth anniversary. That was a FRAUD.

By REFUSING to mark any landmarks of democracy, by supporting the Gaullist system of Council-knows-best, European politicians are not only undermining democracy itself, but also their cherished, illegitimate currency, the Euro. Only a democratic Community system can lay the democratic foundation for a currency circulating in a score of diverse Member States. Without democratic trust the EU is entering a parallel history of the People's Democracies of East Germany, Poland, Hungary and the rest. No amount of writing by the European Ministry of Truth will prevent the fate of counterfeit democrats.

Euro5: TRUST is the key to a strong European currency. Schuman gave the plan for sound policy.

The European leaders are learning the lesson known to all monetary authorities throughout the ages. The main foundation of all money is trust. Once trust evaporates the currency collapses. It is like chasing after a wild animal let loose out of a field.

Is the European currency doomed to failure? No. The supranational European Community system is far more robust than any flawed plan for a currency. European unity is a powerful and ineluctable force, stronger than any politicians or self-serving group.

There is a plan for the European currency that will get the approval of all major sections of Europe. It would also make it extremely difficult for blackmail operations by speculators -- that is those who try to use the markets for immoral, selfish purposes.

On 10 February 1953 the European Coal and Steel Community introduced Europe's first Single Market. With a single market it was necessary that eventually a single currency would have to be built on the five institutions. The first Community had its own European tax, based on production, not currency or accountant-adjusted profits.

The idea of a currency was already implied in the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950. When the time was ripe, it should be built on the principles of supranational democracy.

When they created the euro, the European leaders did not follow the concept of a supranational democracy backing up the European currency. They thought they knew best. The naive or willingly ignorant politicians made an international currency based on so-called 'good intentions' and their equally faulty theory of human nature. They made their decisions in secret, relying on their own instincts and personal and political attachments to each other.

'Just make all the currencies relatively stable,' they said, 'convert the name to euro and, Hey Presto! you have a European currency!' They seem to think if they invited some darker culprits to join the euro gang, then they would appear white in comparison. It does not work that way!

And it was inevitable that the markets would test their theory and practical failures to destruction if they could. That is the nature of markets. It proved a vapour of self-deceit. The political 'partners' cheated on each other. They used the coffers of the 'own' States as their own party campaign funds. They cooked the statistics.

In a commercial company if such things were done, it would not only mean that the executives were fired, they would enter the gates of the local prison for a long stay. It's called embezzling. For some reason, politicians think that they are above such justice.

With the introduction of two further European Communities a broad range of other goods had to be brought into as Single Market, from fissile material to agricultural products. In the 1960s intra-Community trade was based on units of account later known as the ECU, the European Currency Unit. At a time when no one imagined the US dollar would be devalued, it was defined and set at parity with the dollar in terms of gold.

Then President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. So the politicians decided that they would remain on the gold standard. But France's Franc proved to be weak and de Gaulle did not want to be shown up. He was concerned about his rural and agricultural voters. Solid, honest money proved too hard for other light fingered politicians.

They fudged the matter. They brought in a highly complex system of compensatory funding. They were supposed to be temporary. Guess what? These handouts of tax money to the politicians' favourites became permanent and more and more complex.

The second fudge was not to use any standard at all but to make the currency up as they went along. Look ! No Hands! The European Currency was not based on US dollars based on gold. It was not based on gold. It is not even based on GDP. It is based on crooked statistics!

When the ancient kingdom of Lydia (now western Turkey) created a coinage that was used far and wide as a trading aid, it did so by assuring that the coins had

• a standard weight
• a standard purity, either of gold, or silver or of electrum, a natural mixture of the two.

Coins replaced the earlier system of just weighing out a specific quantity of metal as a means of exchange. That required a system of standard weights. Some people cheated with the balances.

The earliest known legal code -- the Laws of the old Babylonian kingdom of Eshnunna which predates Hammurabi -- showed that wheat and barley were considered much more prized as exchange than money. The interest rate on the cuneiform tablets show barley had an interest rate of 33 percent while silver had only 20 percent. Food was more valuable and it was also perishable. Food is real. You cannot eat gold.

Two and a half thousand years ago, Aristotle, the Greek philosopher and royal tutor, warned that there was a big difference between economics (dealing with running the household) and chrematistics, the immoral (and ultimately senseless) hoarding or accumulation of wealth. There were three goods, an external good, a good of the body and a good of the soul.

Some of these principles were applied by his Macedonian student, Alexander the Great. Millions of coins were struck across his empire with a specific image and of standard weight. The museums and private collections of Alexander's silver tetradrachm indicate the fine detail of the coin production. It created a common external good. They circulated from Britain to Afghanistan, in Africa and beyond. The gold coins were known as philippi, after Alexander's father.

They were not easy to forge. At least in those days. Later generations shaved the rims of the coins, or forged them of inferior materials. That is what some European leaders are trying to do electronically today.

Everyone seems to be at it. The modern Greeks were the most flagrant. They probably did not have to learn much from the others. But they took the cheating a bit too far. Some politicians wanted to ignore the common politicians' problem and they persuaded them to let the fiddling go on for years. The others tried to put an end to it.

Remember the politicians were the people who gave you the Meat Mountains and Wine Lakes. Monetary fraud was less obvious and more devious. It is easy for one or more (in this case, many) States to illegitimately exploit the huge benefits of a common currency. They let the others keep the rules, remain honest and keep their books straight. False statistics didn't really fool anyone but no one wanted to cause a scene and shout: 'CHEAT!' at fellow politicians. They knew that once the blame game started all would be found guilty ins some sort of dubious practice.

And if they kept their mouths shut as many did, they would also be found guilty and irresponsible towards their own electorate because they had promised to keep their own currency solid and follow the common rules for the euro. Guilt by fact or guilt by collusion and association, that is the outcome of secret meetings without public accountability. That's why Schuman said that the Community democracy should be open with open meetings subject to public control.

Then the European Statistical service, Eurostat, put in the knife.

The reliability of Greek government deficit and debt statistics has been the subject to continuous attention for several years. The Greek general government data reported by the authorities have been persistently contested by Eurostat, far more frequently than for any other Member State.

That's what the European Commission had to admit in the end. The Commission published a report about the fraudulent Greek stats in January 2010.

On 2 and 21 October 2009, the Greek authorities transmitted two different sets of complete Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP) notification tables to Eurostat, covering the government deficit and debt data for 2005-2008, and a forecast for 2009. In the 21 October notification, the Greek government deficit for 2008 was revised from 5.0% of GDP (the ratio reported by Greece, and published and validated by Eurostat in April 2009) to 7.7% of GDP. At the same time, the Greek authorities also revised the planned deficit ratio for 2009 from 3.7% of GDP (the figure reported in spring) to 12.5% of GDP, reflecting a number of factors (the impact of the economic crisis, budgetary slippages in an electoral year and accounting decisions).

Why are budgetary statistics different in a electoral year? Why do they 'slip'? Aren't governments managing the budget properly regardless of what year it is? Or are they bribing the voters by giving them goodies from money they do not have? Would the executive committee of a tennis club coming up for re-election be considered ethical if it took out a loan to give free tennis balls to the membership before they voted?

Politicians do not want to discuss when governments are guilty of crimes that would send company executives to prison. Yet we are talking about sums of money larger than those of most commercial corporations. The leaders have to have the courage to treat finances as a non-ideological matter. They have responsibility beyond their parties to the people. And the people should have their say in the management of the monetary system, according to supranational democracy.

A common currency cannot be built when one or many States refuse to keep honest accounts. A Community must be built on values that include honesty to each other. This has huge advantages. An honest interchange builds a Community that cannot be broken. Honesty, the 9th of the Ten Commandments is a fundamental Biblical value on which European democracy is founded.

'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour'

Schuman wrote:

‘This idea of ‘Europe’ will reveal to everybody the common bases of our civilization and will create little by little the bond similar to that which in ages past has forged our home countries. It will be a force that will breach all obstacles.’

Unless they realise the futility of any other path, the politicians are doomed to get deeper into a maelstrom of disaster.

The financial realist Robert Schuman -- who as Finance Minister and Prime Minister rescued France from widespread corruption and financial chaos after the World War, stabilizing the currency, balancing the budget and attacking galloping inflation -- had this additional warning:

'Ideology or dreams will not change the facts about finances, whether in the State budget or that of the family.'

Stealing other people's property was wrong in the time of the Laws of Eshnunna and it is wrong today.

Elections5 EU's Treaty Change Blitz is a blitz against open democracy

I must admit I was a bit surprised when I received a press release from the European Parliament last week. It said tersely:

Communiqué de presse - 24.06.2010.
Eighteen additional MEPs a step closer to starting work

The 18 additional MEPs envisaged by the Lisbon Treaty are a step closer to starting work. The treaty change needed to enable them to do so was approved by Member State representatives at a brief Intergovernmental Conference on 23 June, after a green light from Parliament. The 18 MEPs can start work only after EU Member States have ratified the change (My emphasis)

A Brief IGC - you're telling me. A tad secret too. I was well aware that the European Parliament was aiming to add a few party friends at public expense. That was expected. They even had a debate and a motion. Enlarging Parliament was part of the secret deal made as part of the secret negotiations for the Lisbon Treaty. (Secret because the public was not asked about it. It was an agreement between party political leaders who take extra public money without asking the public's permission.)

All such agreements have to be agreed by the representatives of the nations. The public might like to ask: How would governments defend the extra expense at a time when governments of the PIGS are tottering trying to control their overspending and budget abuse.

However, the Blitz Inter-Governmental Conference shot past me. I was glad I wasn't hit by the lightning. I attended the European Council on 17 June. I listened at the press conference. Not a whisper about an IGC. An obscure reference to one of its internal  documents and 'necessary procedure' is in the conclusions. For democrats debate is also a 'necessary procedure.' By that I mean a debate between the politicals and the public, simply because a majority of the public has increasingly shown at elections its distrust for the politicals.

(By politicals I mean the politicians, the parties and the political party systems that say they are representatives of the people but act as a cartel against the people for their own career, financial or party advantage.)

So we have a secret, closed door European Council unwilling to have a public debate on vital matters of democracy. What does it do? Add further obscurity and secret meetings to avoid a public debate.

Why? Were the politicians afraid they might get some awkward questions? It might seem a bit inopportune to publicise the increase in MEPs. People might also ask about why MEPs are also asking to spend more on assistants and other matters during a financial crisis. Others might ask why more MEPs when at every election, more and more of the electorate is refusing to vote for any of them?

At the Council building I did not find any communiqué later about this IGC. I asked the Council for the communiqué. I was told there wasn't one. An IGC took place with no one knowing about it. So-called democratic governments did not deem it necessary to tell anyone about the IGC. No press release was published after it took place. At least the EP debated it in public before grabbing more money.

The IGC took place behind closed doors in the COREPER committee. This is a committee of civil servants called permanent representatives. They are not even politicians.  They were talking secretly amongst themselves about something else that would affect the European public. Then they changed hats, declared an IGC, and pronounced a Treaty Change 'in the margins' of the meeting, as they say.  That is the New Lisbon Democracy? Phew! Closed doors, civil servants making decisions on major issues, no press, no questions.

An Inter-Governmental Conference used to mean something. Now it means a rubber stamp by bureaucrats. Thus the European Council is confirming its disdain for democracy. It is saying its version of democracy or rather its system is what we say it is. No open debates. Another word for that is autocracy.

I have a proposal. Now the Council has developed a lightning technique for European decisions, I would like to know if the national politicians can start to catch up on the backlog of duties. Some urgent Treaty implementations have been on ice for nearly sixty years.; The Six governments signed up to these promises in 1951 and 1957 and other States immediately on accession. These Treaty articles said surprisingly that the European Parliament should be European. That means Europe-wide elections under a single statute for all.

A quick IGC could arrange that pan-European parliamentary statute. In other words the governments would forswear from cheating and having 27 national elections to the European Parliament. Each one is presently arranged according to national rules that curiously favour the main political parties in the State. A touch of honesty would therefore be helpful.

The Treaty of Paris, the founding treaty of the European community and the two treaties of Rome all agree. There should be a single election where electors can vote for any candidate in any country of the Community. Each elector should have one vote not up to twelve as some are now allowed to have.

The people must be 'free to choose' to quote from Europe's founding Charter. Half a century ago, Schuman wrote:

'In the not too distant future it is necessary to provide for elections with direct universal suffrage of the members of the Assembly which will exercise the powers of control, in conformity with the Charter of the Community. Article 138 (of the Economic Community) moreover gives this Parliament the mandate to draw up such a such a draft electoral project. The statute must be uniform for all Member States. It is certain that people's consciousness of a united Europe would be intensified and be more physically manifested if it could be regularly affirmed by a vote across the entirety of Europe,' (Pour l'Europe pp146-7)

Come on Council of Ministers. We know you can do it! Try getting your democratic priorities right!

And while the Council of Ministers is in the business of Blitz-IGCs, would it not be possible to give adequate notice so people could ask questions. And can the IGCs and the Council be open to the public as the Founding Fathers said they should be?
Thank you, Council.