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Another two bite the dust.
This week gone past has seen both Hungary and Malta vote to become vassals of the Belgian Empire.
Not without significance, though, is the embarrassing lack of popular mandate apparent in both of these soon-to-be-smothered-in-regulations countries. A high turnout in Malta produced only a wafer-thin majority in favour. In Hungary, a very large majority in favour has to be read in the context of a pitifully low turnout. One can only imagine the extent of the bribes offered, favours invoked and threats implied in order to get the ‘right’ results. From North to South to East to West, the Empire continues its joyless advance with the all prosaic, depressing predictability of a tumour.
Where is it heading? Well, some of us have already guessed as much but British Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan provides a sobering confirmation:
A false and dangerous idea is taking hold in Britain, especially among Euro-sceptics. It goes something like this. The Iraq war has wrecked plans for closer European integration. It has set Old Europeans against New ones, driven Britain back on the Anglo-Saxon world, reminded everyone of how much they rely on the Americans, and made the idea of a European Army seem laughable….
The trouble is that Euro-fanatics are prone to the same impulse. For them, the war is the strongest demonstration to date of why Brussels needs a unified foreign policy. Never again, they say, should the EU be enfeebled by internal divisions. Never again should Europeans be forced to watch in frustration as the Americans give some tinpot dictator a good kicking. Never again should London be allowed to behave in so non-communautaire a fashion…
“But it won’t happen,” say British commentators. Really? Two weeks ago, almost unreported, the EU army was deployed for the first time in Macedonia. “But it can’t work,” object the critics. This, of course, is what we all said about the Soviet Union and, in the long term, we were right. But it wouldn’t have been much fun to have been born in Russia in, say, 1910, and lived through the process of it not working.
It may well be that the European Army, like European taxation, European criminal jurisdiction and European monetary union, “can’t work”. But that won’t stop it happening. Just watch.
Not really any great surprises here. Just further confirmation that the 21st Century will see a new Cold War. The phrenology may be a little different but the lines are already being drawn. I have no doubt whatsoever as to which side will emerge triumphant but what worries me deeply is that Britain is already more than half-way signed up to the wrong side.
Now that dust is beginning to settle on Baghdad, the enarques of Europe and their toadying federast stooges in the UK are going to be putting volcanic pressure on Tony Blair to sign away the last remaining vestiges of British independence and offer up this nation in tribute to the secular Cardinals of Brussels. I am not at all sure that he will be able to resist this pressure. Worse, I am not at all sure he even wants to.
[My thanks to Philip Chaston for the link to the Daniel Hannan article]
Determined to prove that there is a bureaucratic solution to every problem, the European Commission has announced plans to set up a European Centre for disease control:
The European Commission is set, by the end of May, to propose that a European centre for disease prevention and control be set up.
The news comes as several parts of the world succumb to new cases of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) the flu-like virus which attacks the young, old, healthy and unhealthy alike – and has caused several deaths.
Cunning and astute as ever, the Commissioners already have a plan to prevent the spread of SARS in Europe. According to Dutch Health Commissioner Willy Van Der Pimp:
“No further cases of SARS will be allowed into the European Union as this disease does not conform to European safety standards”.
However French Commissioner Bertrand Maginot was even more forthcoming:
“We must abandon the idea that disease can be beaten by medical science. This is simplistic and dangerous and will only be the cause of more disease. Epidemics can only be prevented by negotiating with the various diseases as part of the political process.”
The Commissioners are in the process of forming a sub-committee to look into the ‘root causes’ of disease.
A follow up on the yesterday’s article about the EU constitution. In today’s Telegraph’s opinion section, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is concerned that “while we liberate Iraq, Europe is busy planning to enslave us”:
The EU will no longer be a treaty organisation in which member states agree to lend power to Brussels for certain purposes, on the understanding that they can take it back again. The EU itself will become the fount of power, with its own legal personality, delegating functions back to Britain. Draft Article 9 puts Brussels at the top of the pyramid. “The Constitution will have primacy over the law of Member States,” it says.
The new order may also be irreversible. Article 46 stipulates that the terms of secession from the EU must be agreed by two thirds of the member states. In other words, one third can impose intolerable conditions.
We can already see the impact of the EU fiasco in handling the Iraq crisis:
The EU will have the power to “co-ordinate the economic policies of the member states” and – showing some chutzpah given what happened over Iraq – “define and implement a common foreign and security policy, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy”.
And there is a bit about, Tony Blair, our hero:
Tony Blair was slow to see the threat. Downing Street at first dismissed the convention as a talking shop, but woke up when the French, Spanish, German and Italian governments gave it irresistible authority by appointing to it their foreign or deputy prime ministers.
The Government then fell back to a second self-deception, imagining that France and Spain would join Britain in blocking any major assault on national prerogatives.
[…]
None of this has happened. France has abandoned Britain, and her own historical attachment to a Europe where national capitals always have the whip hand over Brussels. They seem to be accepting federalism as the price of relaunching the broken Franco-German axis. As for the Spanish, they are silent.
Scary stuff, please go and read the whole article.
A tough secession clause in the new European constitution would make it illegal for Britain to leave the European Union without permission.
Article 46 of the secret draft text, obtained by The Telegraph, says the terms of departure for any country wanting to leave must be approved by two thirds of member states.
The draft is to be presented this week to the 105-strong Convention on the Future of Europe by the praesidium, headed by the former French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing. It is releasing the Europe’s first constitution piece by piece over the next few months.
The text, still subject to last-minute changes today, would allow a minority bloc of states to impose conditions, offering no guarantee that a departing country could keep its trading rights or reclaim currency reserves held by the European Central Bank.
David Heathcoat-Amory, a Tory MP on the convention, called the text outrageous.
It’s a prison clause, not a secession clause. We thought we could repeal the 1972 European Communities Act if the worst came to the worst, but this shows we’re no longer talking about a voluntary union you can leave whenever you want. It is the final extinction of parliamentary sovereignty.
Mr Heathcoat-Amory said the two European commissioners on the praesidium, France’s Michel Barnier and Portugal’s Antonio Vitorino, had pushed through a highly integrationist text.
Addendum:
for Matt Owen
During my search for breaking news for fast & furious warblogging on the Command Post, I came across this precious announcement:
The fledgling Euro-army launched its first military operation yesterday, picking the Balkan state of Macedonia as a trial run for future missions in Bosnia, Africa and the Caucasus.
A force of 320 soldiers wearing “Eufor” badges with the European Union’s blue and gold stars on their right shoulders took over peacekeeping duties at a ceremony in Skopje, replacing Nato troops who have already done the hard work of pacifying Macedonia over the past two years.
EU officials cite the mission as proof that joint defence plans agreed by France and Britain in 1998, and further honed by the EU a year later, remain on track despite the bitter differences over Iraq. While volleys of insults go back and forth across the Channel, British and French officials are meeting twice a week to lay the groundwork for a joint aircraft carrier battle group designed to project EU power around the world.
“You might not believe it, but Franco-British defence is going great guns”, said a senior diplomat. The general assumption in Brussels is that Tony Blair will commit Britain deeper to EU defence once the Iraq conflict is over.
Somebody please tell me that this is a joke…
Also posted on the Command Post
Malcolm Hutty spots someone taking a frequent ‘Samizdata.net’ position…
An article in the Telegraph argues that Britain should seek maximum political capital through institutionalising a re-invigorated permanent alliance with America. France and Germany should be left to take care of the neccessary fence-mending; since when has it been in Britains interests to increase French political influence?
So far, so very Samizdata. And not at all suprising for a Telegraph op-ed. However, down at the bottom of the web page is this significant byline:
David Frum was President Bush’s speech writer and author of his ‘axis of evil’ speech.
You do not have to believe in ‘argument from authority’ to realise that sometimes who is making an argument is as important as anything they say.
Malcolm Hutty
Polly Toynbee, doyenne of the transnational progressive movement and all-round-leftist prig, is shocked, shocked! that Tony Blair’s forthright denunciation of France’s perfidy over Iraq is damaging our prospects of getting deeper into bed with the Eurofederalists…
Once again <drums roll!> – excellent! Let’s hope that a woman who is so consistently wrong is actually correct on this one!
So it appears that we are now a few days, or possibly even a few hours, away from being engaged in an honest-to-goodness, actual, balls-out, fighting war. Despite the misgivings of Antoine Clarke, I believe HM forces will acquit themselves admirably although there is no doubt that the bulk of the war effort will fall upon the much larger US contingent.
We are here now because Tony Blair has prevailed over the anti-war sentiments of much of his own party. Without wishing to sing his praises per se, he has confounded the sizeable number of British commentators who believed that he did not possess the spine to see through his pro-war commitment. He clearly does and he clearly has. Last night’s vote in the House of Commons, on a motion to delay hostilities with Iraq, was defeated despite a record number of Labour rebels voting for it and, ironically, with most of the opposition Conservatives voting against.
Of the Conservatives who voted for the motion, some are undoubtedly what Mark Steyn has called ‘defeatist patricians’. In all but name they are Social Democrats and are driven by sentiments that are not so much anti-American as they are pro-EU. For them, the top-down, corporatist paternalism of Europe is much more resonant of the natural order of things than the racey vulgarity they see as intrinsic to the American way of doing thigs.
But there are others on the British right who are vigourously opposed to Britain taking any part in the attack on Iraq not because they harbour anti-American sentiments (indeed, they heartily reject such nonsense) but because they believe that it is not in British national interests to do so. They are far from confident that any US administration would go to bat for Britain in the way that Britain has gone to bat for America and whilst this may or may not prove to be the case, they (and I) do have genuine cause for complaint about the kid gloves that successive US administrations have put on when dealing with the IRA.
However, it would appear that at least some of isolationist argument in this regard is based on the erroneous (and largely left-inspired) view that Tony Blair is merely acting as George Bush’s ‘poodle’; that he will get his ‘orders’ direct from Washington and that he will send British troops off to yomp around the planet in whatever direction the Whitehouse commands.
It is this kind of thing that makes for good copy, but it is not actually true. For good or for bad, Blair has very much acted as his own man throughout this whole affair. Had it not been for Tony Blair, the Americans would almost certainly have not agreed to take (the ultimately fruitless) UN route to disarming Saddam. Had George Bush had his way, the war in Iraq would, by now, have been over and done with. Try telling anyone in Washington that Tony Blair is their ‘poodle’. I think you will be sharply disabused of any such view. → Continue reading: The widening channel
Colleagues of mine of Guardianista persusations are muttering about how that evil, gun-toting Texan retard in the White House has “probably busted the EU, the UN, and even NATO”. Much gnashing of transnational progressive teeth today.
As Perry might put it – excellent!
Unless you have been living on an isolated desert island for the past three years – not an entirely bad thought – you would have read of how the collapse of scandal-ridden firms like Enron and WorldCom contributed to the bloodbath in the world’s stock markets.
As the tales of corporate accounting hijinks and outright fraud surfaced, the Cassandras took to print and the airwaves to inform us of how these tales proved that the equity-crazed Anglo-Saxon form of capitalism was vulnerable to such behaviour. Of course, what these tales proved was that the world’s modern capital markets can and will punish malefactors harshly. They certainly did.
Well, corruption is hardly the sole preserve of corporations. And surely there are few more corrupt institutions that the European Commission, as shown by this story in today’s Financial Times newspaper. But whereas businessmen at Enron and elsehwere were swiftly brought before the courts, it seems that corruption in the bureacracy of the EU is proving much tougher to clean up.
To which I would add, why is anyone surprised?
At this very moment, a coterie of bureaucrats and politicians are holding an intense round of meetings and negotiations on a matter of great international significance.
In actuality, what they are doing is plotting the destruction of a nation. Several nations, in fact. But the only one that matters to me is the one of which I am citizen: Britain.
No cruise missiles are involved. No smart bombs, no fighter jets, no artillery and not a single soldier will be deployed on the ground. Instead, the Weapon of Mass Destruction to be employed is called the EU Constitution.
Imagine, if you can, a constitutional document that has been drafted by the editorial team of the Guardian. Well, now you have some idea of what it contains. It is currently in the draft stage under the stewardship of former French President (and those words alone should be enough to raise the hackles on your neck) Valery Giscard D’Estaing. Once completed, it is the instrument by which Europe will be governed.
For a more detailed analysis of exactly what these people regard as the essential missions of European governance, I recommend this essay for the Cato Institute written by Patrick Basham and Marian L. Tupy (who also blogs splendidly from his University at St.Andrews):
“Conversely, the EU constitution is filled with “positive” rights for Europeans that can only be guaranteed by limiting the freedoms of other Europeans. As Hans Werner Sinn, director of the Munich-based Institute for Economic Research, notes: “The document ignores the free-market economy. There is not a word about the protection of property and no commitment to free enterprise and the division of labor.”
But the EU constitution does vow to protect “social justice,” “full employment,” “solidarity,” “equal opportunity,” “cultural diversity,” and “equality between the sexes.” It claims to desire “sustainable development,” “mutual respect between peoples,” and the eradication of poverty.”
Bear in mind that the precise terms of this document are still in negotiation which means they could conceivably get worse. As it is it condemns every European to a sullen and proscribed existance under the velvet whip of a honeycomb of pettyfogging, authoritarian bureaucracies. Some future!
At this point it is appropriate for me to extend my thanks to Philip Chaston who has painstakingly charted the progress of this melancholy circus and, most importantly, the enthusiastic role being played in it by everybody’s ‘war hero’ Tony Blair.
It does give us cause for a deeply ironic chuckle when we see him being compared to Winston Churchill in the foreign press. Janus is nearer the mark, for while he struts the world stage bleating about ‘freedom’ he is quite knowingly pushing this country towards the trap-door. Oh yes, he is being seen to quibble about some of the details but there is no doubt about his commitment to the project.
I suppose we must take a portion of the blame for the misapprehension. Perhaps we should have made it clearer that this man is not trustworthy. Anyway, for the record, this man is not trustworthy. How ironic that he should be instrumental in liberating the Iraqis from their baleful tyrant whilst simultaneously glad-handing the British people into bondage. Sorry, irony is not the quite the word. Tragedy, more like.
We have taken our eyes of this ball for too long. Maybe mesmerised by the spectacle of this man defying much of his own party to do the right thing on the War on Terror, we have scandalously overlooked the fact that he is also busy writing the final chapter of this country’s glorious history.
It appears that we may have underestimated the soaring ambitions of the European Union. Not content with absorbing the ‘Vilnius 10’, they have set their sights on outer space:
“Europe’s first mission to the Moon looks set for a July blast-off.
Scientists and engineers working on the Smart 1 spacecraft are hoping to fly around the 15th of that month – but it all depends on the status of the launcher.”
Doubtless this will be the first of many such missions designed to extend the scope of the European orbit. According to French EU Commissioner Bertrand Maginot:
“At this time, the cosmos is totally unregulated. This is an intolerable situation.”
A Swedish EU representative, Helena Hankårt was prepared to outline the precise aproach:
“It is not so much that we intend to conquer space. It is more a question of bringing space within democratic control.”
The British deputy chair of the Celestial Expansion Committee, Sir Crispin D’oilly-Gitte was rather more forthright in his views:
“Oh but we simply must extend Euwopean influence into space. Otherwise it will be full of those fwightful Amewicans”
The Celestial Expansion Committee has drawn up detailed plans for future ventures and even a broad agreement on contingency operations, as indicated by Dutch Committee member Willy Van Der Pimp:
“There is a draft plan setting out an appropriate response in case of encounters with alien life-forms. However, it is agreed that the aliens must commit themselves to meeting certain minimum regulatory standards before any communication can be approved.”
Members of the committee refused to be drawn on the question of whether space should, indeed, be referred to as the ‘final frontier’.
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