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If there are any talented graphic designers out there perhaps they might want to grasp this opportunity to design a symbol that will, from now on, represent the ‘Country formerly known as Britain’.
The instrument of conquest, the draft EU constitution, was presented in Brussels today. For those of your with the time and fortitude all 148 pages (yes, 148!) of this document can be found here.
Fortunately, the Telegraph has an edited version which sets out the ‘money’ clauses (the ones that British federasts would rather nobody spoke about). Among these are:
Article I-2: The Union’s values
The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, liberty, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights.
These values are common to the Member States in a society of pluralism, tolerance, justice, equality, solidarity and non-discrimination.
Meaningless, empty prattle that might have been drafted up by the editorial team of the Guardian. What ‘solidarity’? What does that mean? And ‘equality’? Does this mean Mao suits for everyone? If not, then what? And why on earth the prohibition on ‘discrimination’? Discrimination just means ‘judgement’. Are we supposed to live without it?
2 The Union shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security and justice without internal frontiers, and a single market where competition is free and undistorted.
Which means that Anglo-Saxon common law and Habeas Corpus are out to be replaced by Napoleonic Code and Corpus Juris.
The Union shall work for a Europe of sustainable development based on balanced economic growth, with a social market economy aiming at full employment and social progress.
Semi-planned economies with rigid labour laws and an omnipresent dead-hand of state.
It shall contribute to peace, security, the sustainable development of the Earth, solidarity and mutual respect among peoples, free and fair trade, eradication of poverty and protection of human rights and in particular children’s rights, as well as to strict observance and development of international law, including respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter.
Euro-sclerosis for the whole world!!
Article I-5: Relations between the Union and the Member States
1 The Union shall respect the national identities of its Member States, inherent in their fundamental structures, political and constitutional, including for regional and local self government.
2 The Member States shall facilitate the achievement of the Union’s tasks and refrain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the objectives set out in the Constitution.
The potemkin clause. This is the one the federasts will refer to in an attempt to rebut concerns over loss of sovereignty. As per usual, they will be lying. It only says that ‘national identities’ will be respected, not sovereignty which is clearly abolished by Part 2 of the clause.
Article I-6: Legal personality
The Union shall have legal personality.
So no question that this is any longer about ‘co-operation of sovereign states for mutual benefit’. The EU will exist as a formal entity separate from the national governments. → Continue reading: And this is how it ends
Britain has no future outside of the European Union. That’s what the federasts keep telling us. That is the specious lie they’ve been peddling for years now. I can only assume that these people manage to sleep at night by consuming a quantity of sedatives fit to bring down a horse.
We have touched upon this issue before, but it is so significant that it bears practically no end of reiteration. Put simply, the EU is dying:
2050, the working population of the USA will have increased by more than the entire present working population of Germany.
EU 15, in contrast, will have lost almost as much working population by 2050 as the entire present working population of Germany.
Remaining EU 15 nations are projected to suffer losses in working population ranging from the manageable (France, minus 8%) to the catastrophic (Spain, minus 35%, Italy, minus 41%).
Tell me, what future is there in marrying a corpse?
[My thanks to Emmanuel Goldstein for the link.]
A referendum on joining the Euro will cause “all-out internal civil war”
– Dennis McShane, Minister for Europe
I never referred to… [civil war] in the Labour Party. Calling for a referendum… would launch a long civil war in the UK with everyone fighting everyone.
– Dennis McShane, Minister for Europe, subsequent clarification.
[Source: BBC News at Ten, BBC online]
Oh well, that’s all right then.
I’ll bet that the EUnuchs are beside themselves with glee now that they have managed to co-opt the Pope:
Just three weeks before the EU membership referendum in Poland, Pope John Paul II has recommended that his compatriots join the European Union.
Sure to be seen as a benediction by many in Poland. Does the Pontiff not realise that the EU is the work of the Devil?
Once in a blue moon I stumble across a story that appears so contrary and so bizarre that I honestly do not know what to make of it.
In fact, I had to stand up, breath deeply and take a walk around my apartment just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming when I read that the Israelis have expressed an interest in joining the European Union:
“In principle, the minister thinks a possibility exists for Israel to join the EU, since Israel and Europe share similar economies and democratic values,” said a spokesperson for Mr Shalom before adding, “it doesn’t mean he is preparing the dossier for applying tomorrow”.
MEP, Marco Pannella, of the Transnational Radical Party is said to be heading the campaign for Israeli membership and claimed on Tuesday that Israel does not exclude submitting an application for full membership during the term of this government.
Alright, no binding promises on the table but just the idea that this is even being floated at quite high-level raises a whole bevy of questions without, as far as I can tell, a single satisfactory answer.
First of all, is either party serious? For the EUnuchs it may be. They have made no secret of their ambitions to expand their sphere of influence over the Middle East and North Africa. But do they really think that they are going to be able to cope with the…er local difficulties?
And what about the Israelis? I can see the appeal of access to European markets for their industrial and agricultural output but have they stopped to contemplate the cost of the greatly increased regulatory burden that would be imposed on them? And what about defence and foreign policy, both of which would eventually have to be decided in Brussels? Not even for a fleeting second can I imagine the Israelis being willing to hand over their security to anyone, let alone the EU. Do they honestly imagine that the Belgians are going to come riding to their rescue should the need arise?
On the other hand, maybe it is not serious at all, in which case, what are the Israelis up to?
No, I’m afraid it’s all a big mystery to me but then the opaque and shadowy labyrinth of international relations often are. Searching for solid intelligence amidst the power-plays, hidden agendas, ulterior motives and nuanced positions is enough to drive anyone to the edge of madness and I am not prepared to go that far.
I am just intrigued.
And, by the by, who the flaming hell are the ‘Transnational Radical Party’? I have never heard of them and I can’t be bothered to go googling for an answer but let’s take it as read that I don’t like the sound of them one little bit.
The election results from Belgium are the usual mess: there are two sets of political parties, which hate each other on linguistic as well as political grounds. Because of proportional representation, this means a compromise of morals, beliefs and meaning.
At this time it is not clear whether the French speaking socialist leader will agree to let the Flemish speaking socialist become the new prime minister, or whether the Flemish free-market liberals will do a deal with the Flemish socialists and retain the leading position in government.
Either way, it looks like more cuts in public spending and taxes, with the outgoing coalition partners (the Greens) having taken a big electoral kick up the backside. The Flemish Greens, appear to have lost all their seats to the Vlaams Blok, a party which campaigns for Flemish independence and against ‘mass-immigration’.
The next government will continue to implement the Euro-bank’s economic policies (a big improvement on any Belgian policy since … who knows?). This means that the opposition nationalists combine breaking up Belgium and effectively the European Union. With any luck, next time the Belgians vote the European Commision will have to pack up and move to Warsaw.
Last night, on Have I Got News For You, a British TV comedy quiz show held in high regard, one of the regulars, Ian Hislop, who also edits Private Eye (but who presumably pays rather less attention to the Private Eye home page), launched a spectacular attack on the European Union and on the idea of Britain being any part of it. The gist of it was that Europe was being dealt a new constitution by a man (Giscard d’Estaing) who would be in prison if he were British. “It’s as if Jeffrey Archer was in charge of Europe.”
Left wing comedian Mark Steel tried to take the sting out of the attack by implying that Hislop was attacking all French people. (“And how about those bloody Italians, crooks all of them, …” etc.) He played the xenophobia card, in other words. But Hislop wasn’t attacking all French people and saying they were all crooks, just Giscard, and, in general, the kind of people who become French Presidents. He steam-rollered right over Steel, not least because this is Hislop’s home turf and both he and Steel knew it.
I can’t remember much of the wording of the attack, and I don’t have it on tape. But in any case, it was the ferocity and the protracted nature of it that was astonishing, rather than the details. Everyone else looked rather embarrassed. Ian, easy boy, you can’t say this kind of thing on TV, BBCTV, BBC comedy TV, said their faces (but not their mouths). But he just raged on regardless.
To Americans who may doubt the significance of all this, Hislop is a much loved figure in Britain. For years now, he and Paul Merton have been swapping gags and banter on HIGNFY, and whenever Hislop has been on the receiving end, he has taken it like a good sport. As editor of Private Eye, Hislop has been involved in savaging many dishonest and unpopular public figures – Jeffrey Archer being only one of many, and unlike politicians, he is considered honest. Whether this is true is beside the point I’m making; the point is, he’s a considerable British personality. So when he lays into the EU as a racket run by racketeers in a manner fit to bust, that has got to count for something, public-opinion-wise.
You had the feeling that Hislop has been waiting for the right moment to throw all his chips onto the table and make his anti-EU pitch, and if that’s right then it is very interesting that he reckons now to be the moment.
One other thing. I say that I don’t have this on tape. By this evening, assuming all goes well, I will have it on tape, because the show is being repeated tonight on BBC2 TV tonight, at 10.05 pm.
An update following my article on the Bruges Group meeting on Thursday (right before our previous hosting server went nuclear).
The Daily Telegraph is reporting that opinion polls show that the UK public both opposes the single currency and a proposed new EU Constitution.
Okay, okay, I hear folk say, opinion polls are not everything, and the ability of the British political class to stiff the public they are supposed to represent is a matter of record. Even so, Prime Minister Tony Blair is famed for his attention to the focus group. And if public opinion can be galvanised, he may stay his hand at wiping out what remains of Britain as an independent, self-governing nation.
Well, I always was the optimistic type of guy.
“How and by whom do you wish to be governed?”.
Such was the simple and sharp question posed to a mostly grey-haired audience of eurosceptics at a meeting of the UK’s Bruges Group in London this evening by noted thriller writer, journalist and former RAF pilot, Frederick Forsyth. Your humble correspondent turned up to a packed audience to hear about Forsyth’s and noted EU legal expert Martin Howe on the subject of a possible new Constitution for Europe. It made for alarming hearing.
While partly overshadowed by the recent war on terror and the Iraq campaign, a group of senior European politicians and bureaucrats have been working to set up the framework for a new European Constitution, which would effectively destroy the present EU member states as sovereign self governing nations. There can be no doubt about the outcome. The result would be an undemocratic, unaccountable monster.
Here are some of the comments by Forsyth which I particularly liked: “I always took the view (during the development of the EU) that there was something to come, some finality, some point to be reached. We have now reached the stage….a single European nation state.”
Martin Howe: “It (the constitution) will destroy the sovereignty which the UK parliament ultimately possesses.” Another: “It is very difficult to see how any democratic control can be exercised over the organs envisaged in this Constitution.”
Howe said that the draft of the treaty for a new Constitution should be ready by the late summer of this year and could be ratified by member states in about two years’ time. That is right – just two years.
My impressions: well the audience for the two men last night was packed and I would imagine that about 99 percent of those present agreed with more or less everything said by the speakers. I heard no dissenting voices there.
Where does the libertarian meta-context relate to all this? After all, the desire for Britain to remain a parliamentary self-governing democracy is not the same thing as being, say, a minarchist libertarian who wants to get the State off his back. However, I would say from a pragmatic point of view, we have more chance of pushing forward our libertarian ideas within the framework of a common political entity underpinned by a shared culture and history than in a multi-lingual, multi-national behemoth headed by bureaucratic institutions with very sluggish lines of accountability. Hence I support the Bruges Group folk, even though my nose my wrinkle in distaste at some of the more reactionary language employed by some of its members.
I don’t get much impression that the issue of the EU Constitution is grabbing a lot of attention in the mainstream British media, although some of the tabloid press (let’s not sneer at them) are beginning to get on to this. No doubt Prime Minister Tony Blair is betting that he can sleepwalk us into his European nirvana. Let’s not let him get away with it.
Quite an old story (end of April) but interesting. Write a protest on your own property: get warned off by the police.
A German man who staged a political protest by writing “The Government is crap” on his own car, has been told to remove it or face jail.
Police failed to see the funny side of 33-year-old Stefan Lukoschek’s protest at the policies of Gerhard Schroeder.
Officers said they had received complaints from several people about protest on his yellow VW. The words were stenciled on the rear and side windows.
Lukoschek said: “I put it on there because my father who worked all his life, has seen his pension reduced to nothing by the current government.”
“Police failed to see the funny side”. Well obviously that’s because:
- It wasn’t a joke.
- They’re German.
So the German police warn a guy off who writes anti-government statements on his own property (so he must presumably have been breaking some law), the French now have laws against booing the national anthem or insulting the flag (no, really)… and apparently also against insulting the president, and the EU is concocting assorted speech-crime laws to cure “online xenophobia”. What a fine state of affairs.
Robert Hinkley
Tony Blair is heroic, Churchillian, principled and upstanding.
I’ve been reading a lot of that kind of thing of late and at every incidence I am caught between doubling up in ironic laughter and throwing open the window to shout obscenities into the street.
I have no way of knowing for sure if this report is accurate. Certainly it’s appearance in the Guardian/Observer means a source-warning is essential. However, if it turns out that they are telling the truth, then the ‘heroic, Churchillian’ Mr.Blair is about to usher in the last stages of the Great Betrayal:
Tony Blair is to give Cabinet Ministers the green light to campaign to join the euro even though the majority of the key ‘five tests’ will not be met.
In the clearest signal yet that he wants to pave the way for Britain to join the single currency, Whitehall sources said that he will allow Cabinet members a ‘freer reign’ to push the arguments on the issue. When the results of the tests are announced in the next three weeks, Blair wants to make it clear that Britain has taken an ‘enormous step’ towards joining, and will argue that the British economy is now closer to that of other European countries, essential to the euro working.
The man who helped liberate Iraq from tyrrany could be about to sell Britain down the river to Euro-serfdom.
Many years ago, not long after I had graduated from law school, I briefly succumbed to a rather silly conviction that I was a cultural barbarian and this state of affairs could be addressed by becoming an afficianado of European cinema. I should admit that this conviction was in no small measure driven by the belief that being au fait with the work of European film-makers was a surefire way to impress the girlies.
So I started to spend much of my free time ferreting out art-house independent cinemas (of the kind that sold organic brownies in the foyer instead of popcorn) and sat through endless hours of turgid, narcolepsy-inducing, state-funded, navel-gazing about the tortured psychological relationship between a middle-aged sub-postmaster and his trotskyite revolutionary girlfriend in the seedy hostel they share with a couple of Vietnamese refugees on the outskirts of Hamburg. Or something.
These films have all amalgamated in my mind and I cannot remember the name of even a single one. After about six months, I decided that no woman was worth this level of constipation so I threw the towel in and went back to watching simplistic sci-fi blockbusters and gangster movies.
But it is because of that brief self-inflicted nightmare that I understand exactly how these guys feel:
The survey by the Parliament’s cultural committee concluded that EU consumers prefer foreign cultural goods – such as films and music – to European products.
About 40 per cent of respondents said that, in general, European citizens do not prefer European cultural products. The situation in the European film industry is particularly bad.
By ‘foreign’ I rather think they mean Anglosphere, especially Hollywood.
Anyway, as per usual for the Belgian Empire, the answer to this problem lies in a top-down political solution. Understandably alarmed by this disturbing outbreak of free market value judgements, the EU has swung into action and established a ‘Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport’ (no, really!) that has produced a ‘working document’ that reads pretty much like a script for one of the above-mentioned movies.
However, there are a few things that caught my eye:
Another challenge is how to stimulate the industrial actors to respond in time to loud-and-clear customer demand, in particular of the not-so-well-off younger generation, thereby focusing on long-term viability instead of on fast returns.
How is any ‘industrial actor’ supposed to recognise ‘loud-and-clear customer demand’ except by reference to the returns? Note how institutional the old soclialist canards have become. These people actually believe that the way to ensure an industry has long-term viability is to render it unprofitable.
The time has come to shape an inspired, efficient and democratically defined long-term cultural policy in order for the Union to make better use of its underdeveloped growth potential, as President Prodi repeatedly advocated in our House.
Right there is that sentence is an encapsulation of just about everything that is so grossly wrong with European thinking. The idea that in order to have more culture it must be defined and prescribed by a committee of appointed poobahs, pretty much guarantees that European cultural output remains as crap and unwanted as it clearly is now.
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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.
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