We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Although the Blair government has needed little encouragement from the European Union to destroy our civil liberties and impose ever more layers of political control over our lives, it seems he has decided to try and lock a few more controls at the more remote European level.
And will a future Cameron government undo what Blair has wrought? Do not make me laugh. As Dave Cameron even attempted to back out of his pre-leadership promise to take the token action of removing the ‘Conservatives’ from the integrationist EPP grouping in the European ‘parliament’ (and the Conservatives MEPs are still in a de facto coalition with the EPP), clearly he lacks the inclination to do anything of actual substance.
Clearly the only way to undo what Blair has wrought in Brussels is to just start ripping up treaties or better yet get out of the EU altogether… and that is not going to happen under any foreseeable UK government. Nothing short of a social earthquake that radically shifts the political landscape is going to make much difference and that ain’t going to happen under any likely government I can foresee.
I wish I understood Turkish politics better than I do. There was a large pro-secularism rally in Ankara, which is surely a good thing. The fact these people are backed by the army is an even more encouraging sign.
On Friday evening military chiefs said in a statement they could intervene if the election process threatened to undermine Turkish secularism.
EU politics however, I understand just fine. The usual halfwits have moaned that the Turkish army is interfering with democracy because they made it clear they will not tolerate Turkey becoming an Islamic state. Yet strangely all manner of constitutional limitations on the democratic will of the majority exist in many countries (the USA and Switzerland, for example) and yet that does not seem to attract the displeasure of the fools who live off our tax money in Brussels.
In Turkey, the army is probably the best bulwark against Islamism and the fact the same €uro-spokesmen allegedly responsible for working towards integrating Turkey with the EU want to weaken the role of the main opponent of Islamist political aspirations in the country is… astonishing.
There is a strong interaction between British ideas on security and those adopted by Europe, where New Labour dreams of authoritarian and democratic socialism can be writ large. The justification of a new database to hold fingerprints for every EU citizen is a larger white elephant than any yet conceived. Knowing the opposition that would arise if this project was publicised:
The proposal, which was buried in a lengthy European Commission document setting out policy goals for next year, managed the rare feat of uniting all sides in opposition. Euro-sceptics criticised them as the trappings of a super-state, while some of Europe’s most ardent supporters complained of a threat to civil liberties.
This is part of the extension of EU powers into the sphere of justice and security. The Commission has gained the power to prosecute certain crimes and wishes to extend these at a European level. The powers are descibed as “indispensable”. The project was initially based on a voluntary scheme between certain Continental countries and is now being extended through harmonisation and Member States’ agreement.
We will be less secure, crime will rise, and the databases portend further declines in civil liberties.
The British Council announced that ten offices in Europe would shut so that funds could be diverted to the Middle East and Asia. Part of this diversion is admirable: an attempt to undermine the attraction of the Salafist ideology for impressionable youths. Scepticism rises over the small sums allocated in comparison to the rich charities that fund madressehs in all Muslim countries.
Martin Davidson, director general designate of the British Council, said it was “time to tackle the new challenges the world faces.”
These included “building trust with the Islamic states and China,” Davidson told the Press Association.
The council would scrap “traditional arts activities” in Europe, such as orchestral tours and artistic commissions, in favour of projects “designed to prevent Muslim youths from being indoctrinated by extremists sympathetic to al-Qaeda,” the Times said.
This project is coordinated by a new leader of the British Council, who also stated that they would be working with their European partners to promote common values. The British Council belongs to EUNIC, the European Union National Institutes for Culture, and this new organisation was launched on the 21st February 2007 (pdf file). Is it any coincidence that, as soon as the British Council is submerged within a pan-European body, its focus is aimed at the Middle East and China? Even the small details begin to back up Mark Steyn.
One of the grey areas in European Union law is the primacy of community law in relationship to the constitutions of the Member States. As the treaties have encroached more and more upon the national sovereignty of Member States, this has become a fraught issue. It has resulted in a staunch defence of sovereignty or a surrender of the national prerogative. The country having the strongest debate upon this issue is France.
In a recent case at the Conseil D’Etat, Arcelor had requested a ruling on whether EU law violated the principle of equality in the French Constituion as steel companies had to comply with climate change laws whereas the competing industrial sector of plastics was exempt. The Conseil D’Etat declined to make a ruling and referred the case to th European Court of Justice. This has caused a debate in France as to whether the French constitution is now subordinate to the European Court of Justice.
The French court’s decision not to conduct a constitutional test on EU legislation is seen as significant as it arguably places France’s constitution below the ECJ in the legal hierarchy.
Although the supremacy of EU law over national law has been well-established, the status of national constitutions has been less clear not only in France but also elsewhere, including Germany.
Leading newspaper Le Monde was quick to predict on the day of the ruling that sovereignists and eurosceptics would probably interpret the judgement as a “Waterloo” of French sovereignty – something which became a self-fulfilling prophecy as sovereignists were eager to stress that even Le Monde called the ruling a “Waterloo.”
There is some debate as to whether this was the groundbreaking referral that some commentators have stated. As the ruling concerned EU law, it has been argued that the Conseil D’Etat was only deferring to the European Court of Justice on this matter as equality was a governing principle with European law. Therefore the European Union and the French Constitution are complementary.
Despite the radical arguments of some who view the entry into the EEC as a watershed that fundamentally abrogated British sovereignty, the right of Parliament to bind the powers of its successor is not a recognised convention yet. Given the political will and a majority in Parliament, the United Kingdom could democratically withdraw from the European Union and assert the primacy of British law. The illiberal EU may not recognise self-determination except as an entry principle, but the constitutional recognition of European law is a parliamentary derogation, nothing more.
Here is the latest Papal Bull from the European Union:
A series of “green crimes”, enforceable across the EU and punishable by prison sentences and hefty fines, are to be proposed under a contentious push by the European Commission into the sensitive area of criminal lawmaking.
The drive by Brussels to apply penalties for ecological crime reflects concerns that some countries treat offences such as pollution and illegal dumping of waste more seriously than others, allowing criminals to exploit loopholes.
It used to be the dream of socialists and utopians of varying degrees of malevolence or stupidity to want a world state. In a world state, pesky local regulatory differences would be obliterated and replaced by a rational grid of laws from which no escape was possible. In true ‘watermelon’ fashion – green on the outside, red in the core – the Greens are embracing the instruments of a pan-national state to enforce their ideas.
There is a superficial plausibility to this. Pollution knows no barriers. If a German coal-fired power station emits carbon dioxide and other things, that will not just affect the Germans living near to the station but other nations. If a Swiss chemicals firm accidentally spills toxic material in to the Rhine – this has happened – then people in Holland get affected, and so on.
But what these sort of cases do is not to suggest that we need to give a centralised, international body coercive powers over people living across a whole continent. Rather, we should keep reminding people that rigorous enforcement of existing property rights, and creation of such rights in hitherto unowned resources, allied to the incentive structures of markets, provide the best route for tackling real environmental problems such as pollution. In any case, with certain emissions, it pays to remember that a pollutant for one person might be a positive benefit – or “externality” – for someone else.
The global warming/pollution/generally-we-are-all-doomed agenda is a significant threat to our liberties at the moment, so I make no apologies for going on about it.
I have just made the mistake of reading the Sunday Telegraph. As is too often the case the only really good thing in the newspaper was Mr Booker’s half page – and it is not worth getting a whole newspaper for half a page.
Looking through the rest of the Sunday Telegraph I came upon an article by Mr David Cameron (the leader of the British ‘Conservative’ party) the main business of the article was not important. It was just another absurd claim that we can “reform” the European Union in order to make it a ‘force for good’ – an excuse for Mr Cameron had his friends to not even promise to get the United Kingdom out of ‘the Union’ which is now the source of about 75% of all new regulations.
However, it was the rewriting of history that caught my eye. Mr Cameron correctly points out that we are coming up to the 50th anniversary of what was in 1957 called the European Economic Community. But Mr Cameron also states that this time (1957) was a time when the European Economic Community (EEC, now the EU) had to deal with a Europe that had been devastated by war, that was under the threat of Soviet attack, and was on the point of economic collapse.
In reality…
War damage had (in most of Western Europe) been to a great extent repaired by 1957, partly by the efforts of Europeans and partly by American aid. The EEC was not the thing that rebuilt the towns and cities of Europe. The Soviet threat was not kept at bay by the EEC – it was kept at bay by NATO (i.e. in reality the American military) and it is NATO, not the EEC/EU, that was responsible for the peace of post war Western Europe, which may well be why so many Europeans hate the United States – people often hate those they have long depended on.
As for on the point of economic collapse. In fact in 1957 Western Europe was in the middle of great period of advance.
Here American aid was not really the driving force. What was the driving force of economic progress was deregulation and the reduction of taxation. This movement is best remembered, if it is remembered at all, by the weekend bonfire of price controls (weekend because the allied occupiers would not be in their offices to block it) and other economic regulations by Ludwig Erhard in the soon to be West Germany in 1948 (the Federal Republic coming into being in 1949).
However, there were similar movements in other Western European nations. Even Britain had its ‘Set the People Free’ and its ‘Bonfire of Controls’ under Churchill and Eden.
Also (again even in Britain) there was a policy in the 1950’s of the reduction of taxation.
Neither the deregulation or the tax reductions had anything to do with the EEC which (as Mr Cameron correctly states) was created in 1957. And I hope that no one will claim that such things as the Iron and Steel Community or ‘Euro Atom’ were behind the deregulation or the tax reductions (in various nations) either.
In short, Mr Cameron’s view of history (which might be best described as “at first there was darkness and then the European Economic Community moved in the darkness…”) has no connection to the truth.
Another two countries are determined to support the constitution. This means that only six countries, including the Czech Republic, will remain. These countries will have to decide whether they want to continue cooperating with the core of Europe or whether they want to again retreat from the European integration process, Posselt says.
Bernd Posselt, leader of the Sedeten German Society and an MEP for Bavaria has praised the Chancellor, Angela Merkel for demanding the Czech Republic to sign up to the European Constitution. Posselt may be supporting the initiative, since it favours restitution for properties seized after the War by the restored Czech Republic, desirous to remove irredentist elements from its polity, and abetted by the barbaric Red Army.
Posselt is merely echoing the ‘friends of the constitution’ who met under the auspices of Luxembourg and Spain over the weekend. The noises coming out of this meeting are not good for Europhiles in New Labour. Despite some willingness to show flexibility on some of the phrases, the ‘friends of the constitution’ wish to use the text as a base and add more areas of competence for integration. The mini-treaty favoured by the British, avoiding the need for a referendum, looks like a long shot. If Segolene Royal wins the French Presidential election and upholds her manifesto promise of another referendum, the tabloids will be howling for blood.
Mr Hoon suggested that moves to streamline decision-making in an enlarged EU could be agreed by the government without being ratified directly by voters.
A decision on a vote would be taken once the outcome of negotiations was clearer "bearing in mind that no previous government has held a referendum on the detailed processes that have been involved in treaty change, he said
Europhiles such as Hoon wish to short circuit a referendum, since they would lose their prize. This may form the final frontispiece of Blair’s legacy, since the meeting on this occurs during the dying days of his premiership. Any warmed up document, with the title Constitution dropped to hide the fundamental and radical nature of the text, needs to be opposed as quickly as possible. New Labour, in this as in all other enterprises, is not a friend of the Union or the English. As for Cameron he may have tried to avoid Europe, but it has returned to force the issue upon him.
Are you a member of the Tory Party? Remember when Dave Cameron said he would pull the Tory Party out of the €uro-Federalist EPP once he was elected leader? Remember when he promised Tory MPs would be free to campaign for withdrawal from the EU provided they were not on the front bench?
Have you had enough of the endless porkie pies from Dave Cameron yet? Do you care if you are lied to just to get your vote? If you do care and you still like the idea of being a member of a political party, then I suggest go and join the only thing even approximating a conservative party in Britain… and to do that, you have to leave the Tory party because if you are not a part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
The only thing worse than another term of Labour implementing its destructive policies would be a term of the same destructive policies being implemented by Dave Cameron’s Tory Party and institutionalising radical regulatory centrist authoritarianism as the only permitted political option in Britain regardless of the party in 10 Downing Street.
Although the editorial writers are pulling out all the stops to minimise the threat of the UKIP, clearly the blood is in the water and ideology-free die-hard ‘sensibles’ like Matthew d’Ancona and other have abandoned their policy of trying to laugh off UKIP. There could be no clearer sign that the Cameron Tories are circling the drain.
Update: I left the following comment earlier today on the Telegraph’s website for the Matthew d’Ancona article linked above. As they seem to have decided not to approve the comment for publication…
So let me see… Dave Cameron (who you may have noticed leads a party that claims to be conservative) promises more ‘green’ regulations, goes back on his pledge to leave the Euro-Federalist EPP, goes back on his pledge to allow non-front bench Tory MP’s to campaign for EU withdrawal if they support that, has called for ‘redistribution of wealth’ a la Polly Toynbee, but no, he has not signed up for the European Social Model and is a pukka conservative. Is that really your position?
Sorry Matthew, but how credulous do you think people are? Not only is Dave Cameron a liar (please show me where the things I have mentioned are incorrect), he is clearly not in fact a conservative by any meaningful definition of the word.
The attempt assassination in London of a critic of Vladimir Putin, Alexander Litvinenko, almost certainly carried out by the Russian intelligence services, highlights that it is long past time to stop treating Russia as ‘just another European government’.
But there is another rather interesting twist to this story that I did not spot in the media yesterday, courtesy of the UKIP.
Update: sadly it is not longer an ‘attempted’ assassination.
Who would you not allow to participate in a parliamentary delegation to Israel? An MEP linked to far right anti-Semitism and holocaust denial. That seems a fairly straightforward rule of thumb. Do not take such figures along as your hosts might get a trifle jumpy.
Welcome to the pomposity of the European Parliament, the post-democrats who represent us. They decided to include Marine Le Pen in their ranks, and the Israelis thereupon refused to meet any of the delegation. The visit was promptly cancelled for “technical reasons“, or, as one official noted, rather pointless.
The cancellation was not met with universal acclaim. Some think that a foreign power should not dictate the membership of a parliamentary delegation:
On the other hand, according to the official, there was concern on the parliament’s side that a national government should not be allowed to dictate the composition of the group.
Others were miffed that they did not go, as they thought had a contribution to make, and the Israelis should have been willing to put the Holocaust behind them:
Speaking before Thursday’s decision was announced, Irish centre-right MEP Simon Coveney, on the delegation list, told EUobserver that he believed the trip should go ahead.
“I don’t think we should be cancelling the event … personally I am going because I am interested [in the issue].”
He added that any members of a parliament delegation have to remember that they are representing the views of the EU assembly and not their own personal view points.
Having given up trying to stay PM and handed over the kulturcampf to Mr Brown, St Anthony now wishes to save the world:
In his strongest warning yet on the environment, the prime minister will tell fellow EU leaders that the world faces “conflict and insecurity” unless it acts now. “We have a window of only 10-15 years to take the steps we need to avoid crossing catastrophic tipping points,” Mr Blair says, in a joint letter with his Dutch counterpart, Jan Peter Balkenende.
I am not interested for this purpose in whether he is right about ‘catastrophic tipping points’. It is entirely possible he is. It is interesting that this is certainly not from his own knowledge. And since actually no one knows enough about climate to say under what conditions, never mind when, a catastrophe, bifurcation, flip, transition… whatever you would like to call it… might occur, then the fact the firm limit of years is reported as as little as 7 in some places, and up to 25 elsewhere, should not worry us.
What should, is the contradiction between the millenarian rhetoric and the irrelevance in its own terms of the hair-shirt policy that we are being exhorted to adopt. If the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause catastrophe at some threshold level, then capping emissions from human activity merely postpones reaching the threshold. By not very much.
If things are that bad either: (1) We should find ways yet unknown to make global human greenhouse-gas emissions close to zero or net negative. (Sorry, no cooked food – except sun-baked and geyser-boiled – until we do.) Or (2) we should enjoy the party at the end of the world. But it seems those in charge do not know the difference between quantity and rate.
Now that is really scary. Reality I can cope with. I am aware I’m going to die, and probably suffer disease and loss first. That the course of my life will be determined not by biology, physics and economics, but by messianic imbeciles with no grasp of any of them, is harder to bear.
For me; the non-exclusive or: technofix plus fun.
For the Head Boy; “Repent, o ye sinners or burn in hell on earth! Go, and sin no more. (Than you did in 1990).”
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
