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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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The evidence is slowly mounting up and it’s pointing in one direction. The finger of suspicion is all but ready to twitch into the rigid instrument of damnable accusation. When even the most ardent and passionate supporters are starting to sniff the foul wind of failure, then you just know that the European Union is heading for the rocks.
Two articles today in the Wanker, the first by a Czech journalist Jana Ciglerova:
“We may still see the economic opportunities that we are told that Europe could bring to us. But we also now sense a fear of the unknown and even that, after barely a decade of freedom, we could be swapping one tyranny for another.”
The fruits of the lumbering Euro-cracy that has left the former Eastern Bloc countries on the periphery kicking their heels for far too long, thus giving them ample time to read through all the small print. For Brussels, the clock is ticking close to midnight now.
Also this rather more arid, technocratic item from somebody called Kirsty Hughes who is described as a writer and consultant on European Affairs’ so it is safe to assume that she knows a little of what she speaks. Evidently a passionate Europhile, even she cannot hide the cracks that are starting to appear in her head:
“The enlargement to be launched at Copenhagen is a historic achievement. But it is only the first step in meeting the European and global political challenges that the new Europe must address. If it fails, then this moment will be seen as a turning point that marked the start of the EU’s decline and not its new beginning.”
How different it all was even a year ago when everyone who was anyone was busy trumpeting the EU as the bright, shiny, exciting project for a better tomorrow with a future written in the stars and those who proffered even the mildest of criticisms were pilloried as xenophobic, reactionary losers.
Well, now the smug grins of satisfaction are on the other faces and the Wankers of the world are united in their creeping realisation that they bought a pup. It’s very nearly pitiful. Like fairy-tale children, the Europhiles are wandering in the deep, dark Graveyard of Grand Schemes, enveloped in the thick miasma of impending doom. Unable to deny its power to grip them or find a way out, they all hold hands and sully forth into the unknown, calling out plaintively for someone to come and rescue them and lead them home.
I almost feel sorry for them. Almost.
Last night I needed to make a tube journey, but the combination of ticket machines unwilling to take notes and ticket booths without staff meant that having arrived at my local tube station I had to leave it again and buy something – anything – just to get some change. Annoying. But the thing I did buy, a copy of yesterday’s Times, did contain a couple of valuable items. There was a deeply scary story about how Germany is going to hell in a handcart, by Rosemary Righter. And there was this letter to the Editor, which put the policies of the European Union in an even more negative light:
Poland and the EU
From Mr Rodney E. B. Atkinson
Sir, I have just returned from a book promotion in Poland, where even those MPs who had been in the forefront of opposition to the Communists told me that they found the EU far more oppressive and dismissive of Polish nationhood than their previous Soviet masters.
Laws were being forced through the Polish Parliament, at the behest of the EU, which had never appeared in any party manifesto, with little debate and which were not yet even law in the existing EU member states.
Perhaps the most insidious new provision in the Polish Constitution is that a law can be enforced in Poland even if it has not been translated into Polish. There can be no more disgraceful indicator of the true nature of the European Union as it constitutionally imprisons nations which so recently escaped from a different tyranny.
Yours etc,
RODNEY E. B. ATKINSON,
Alderley,
Meadowfield Road,
Stocksfield,
Northumberland NE43 7PZ.
December 3.
It was the last paragraph that got me. I hope that gets bounced around the blogosphere. It deserves to.
In one of the most utterly wrong headed articles I have ever seen in the Daily Telegraph, called Watch out America, the 7st EU weakling may kick sand in your face by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard posting from Brussels (naturally), he would have us believe that, in response to criticisms from the USA that the EU is “a status quo power that resists and resents being hurried into a turbulent new post-Cold War era”:
…Europe is arguably the world’s most dynamic political bloc today. While the US borders have changed little since 1848, the EU is about to swallow eastern Europe up to the edge of Russia and Ukraine.
The EU is about to swallow the poison pill of the basket case post-communist agricultural economies of Eastern Europe, eager to feed at the massively subsidized trough of protectionist Europe and Evans-Pritchard holds this up as evidence of dynamism?
But EU officials are quietly confident that the strategic balance will shift as a decade of debt, over-consumption, and ballooning trade deficits catch up with America.
[…]
“Nobody wants to see America in difficulty, but there’s a high risk that the Clinton boom is going to end badly. Then we’ll find out if Europe’s slow vessel might not prove to be steadier in the long run.” One day soon, America may wake to find itself facing a wealthy superpower of 470 million people.
The European Union… filled with heavily taxed, highly regulated and subsidy ‘protected’ economies… is going to overtake lower taxed, less regulated and slightly less subsidised USA? Oh give me a break. The whole reason that the ruling classes of Eastern Europe want to join the European Union, is that the EU seeks to lock in the position of the all its political classes, to insulate them from the reality of de-politicised markets and the consequences of that anti-market politics brings.
Eastern European businesses, at least some of them, see subsidy and protection from global competition from the USA and Far East beckoning, voters likewise see membership of the EU as meaning the end of restrictions on their ability to travel, work and reside in the more developed West… a ‘brain drain’ heading west of the best and brightest that the middle European former ‘eastern Bloc’ has to offer will soon ensue (good news if you live in the ‘west’), followed closely by an army of welfare parasites looking to help themselves to taxpayer money in Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, The Low Countries and Italy (extremely bad news of you live in the ‘west’).
The very essence of the EU is stasis and yet paradoxically, it is spreading, like some Nordic legend of winter eternal sends its deadening cold fingers into everything. The only people who really benefit are those who are sucking at the teat of the state and even them only until the curves of the EU’s spectacularly aging demographics and that of its increasing tax burden cross, like some cruxiform tombstone.
The First World used to be ‘The West’ and Japan, the Second World used to be the Socialist Eastern Bloc… soon ‘First World’ will come to mean the USA, Switzerland, Japan (maybe), Canada (maybe), Australia and new Zealand and, if it finally breaks clear of the European suicide pact, Britain and possibly even Ireland. ‘Second World’ will just come to mean sclerotic Europe, forever sidelined by more dynamic economies eleswhere and more assertive polities everywhere.
EU as future ‘superpower’? Don’t make me laugh.
According to a Wall Street Journal survey European economies are some of the freest in the world and getting more so. The rankings are worth a look.
As I checked the on-line version of the Evening Standard, a London daily, for an update on yet more travel chaos in the capital, I ended up in the newpaper’s chat room. The posts covered a range of topics from strikes in the UK to German economy, Gordon Brown, the EU, etc. I was fascinated by the following opinions and encouraged by an unexpected degree of common sense they contained.
On Gordon Brown, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer:
Comparatively other European economies are worse off than ours… for now. The strikes [ed.note: London tube drivers, fire fighters, airport staff] were inevitable. As soon as Brown started raising huge amounts of tax (direct, indirect, stealth, overt, personal & corporate) and making such a great play out of how he was intending to chuck vast quantities of cash at public services without insisting on reform, the unreformed public sector was always going to demand its ‘fair’ share.
In a way, we can thank Brown. He has finally proved, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that old-fashioned socialism with a Treasury-centred tax-and-spend doctrine is a failure. In the past, plenty of excuses have been trotted out about how enough money wasn’t spent to really make a difference. Now, Brown has thrown unimaginable amounts of money, particularly at the NHS… and there is no visible benefit.
It is long past the time when Brown should put the brakes on spending until reform has been carried out. He is throwing good money after bad… our money. He intends to raise taxes further and further because his pride won’t allow him to admit that he has got it wrong. He will end up sacrificing British jobs, industries and competitiveness on the altar of his own enormous ego.
Great Chancellor? Ha! The man has the economic instincts and ability of a whelk.
On German economy:
It’s Economy has tanked. Many small Businesses are closing down due to massive tax and bureacracy. The Unions have way too much power here and the cost of employing people is outrageous. We need a Maggie Thatcher here to deregulate everything and make Germany competetive again. The only light at the end of the Tunnel is the success of the Euro.
Reply: Christ, it must a f***king dim light then.
On the EU:
Every new regulation from the EU seems to add to the pile, and the language of the EU is that Britain should become more like these countries, not that Europe should become more competitive.
[ed.note: to a Europhile in the thread] Do you understand? Do you see why so many of us find your seemingly blind adoration of all things Euroepan so laughable?
What we have now [in the EU] is a ‘club’ for failed socialist politicians where ineptitude, corruption and waste are rewarded by monolithic undemocratic structures. The main political agenda is set by France, whose selectivity in implementing the outcomes are legendary and Germany, which is drowning under the very rules it has helped to create.
How sound is that?! 
As the Council of Europe grows more confident, the authoritarian future planned for all who live under the blue & gold stary crown of thorns is rapidly becoming an authoritarian present.
The venerable Eurocrats have decreed that, “‘racist and xenophobic material’ means any written material, any image or any other representation of ideas or theories, which advocates, promotes or incites hatred, discrimination or violence, against any individual or group of individuals, based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, as well as religion if used as pretext for any of these factors.”
[…]
The actual criminal act is “making publicly available, through a computer system” any of the [Council of Europe]’s forbidden thoughts. And be warned; there’s a nice weasel clause for carriers — the CoE castrators are very smart. They know that if they held carriers liable the carriers would lobby this piece of bureaucratic abuse into the dust bin. You are on your own here, and by clever design. You will either take to the streets en masse and sternly warn your government that you will not be told what you can and cannot say, or you will be told what you can and cannot say.
We should like to think that this madness won’t stand long; but as Chesterton noted, it’s the business of Liberals to make imbecilic mistakes like these, and the business of Conservatives to ensure that they never get fixed.
Soon the fact that I regard the EU as a cabal of Transnational Socialist who will turn all Europe into a panoptic nightmare may well be considered ‘xenophobic material’ and thus could get me locked up if I wrote that on Samizdata.net from within the EU. Of course the more likely that looks like becoming a realty, the more you will see pseudonymous postings on Samizdata.net and possibly a change of hosting locale. The state is not your friend… and super-states even less so.
The time is coming for things to start getting nasty. Now that habeas corpus has been made meaningless in Britain, if one of Samizdata.net’s British contributors writing from London upsets a Greek politician by writing something like, say…
All PASOK politicians are a bunch of corrupt socialist bastards who allowed the ’17 November’ terrorist organisation to operate in Greece with impunity for decades because it is actually controlled by elements within PASOK. Recent ‘successes’ against N17 will of course uncover exactly nothing.
Well, merely expressing that view can result in a knock on a door in London by British police with a Greek arrest warrant that cites EU law, and next stop for the person who dared to express a dissenting view is some hell hole jail in the armpit of Europe that was once the cradle of Western civilisation.
This is not something that is the fevered products of wacko anti-EU conspiracy theorists, it is reality and it is well any truly upon Europeans and Britons alike. Transnational fascism of coming, in the guise of anti-fascism, and it is coming right now.
If only I got all my wishes fulfilled as fast as this one. Last Thursday I wished for a good internal row within the EU as the most satisfying (and possibly most entertaining) way to their demise.
And voilà, Tony Blair has been banned from a summit between Britain and France as a result of a ‘heated discussion’ with Jacques Chirac at the European summit in Brussels last week. Blair was furious at a deal made behind his back by Chirac and Schroeder and announced on the eve of the talks. The deal would leave payments to French farmers untouched until 2013 as part of the EU’s controversial Common Agricultural Policy, aka the benchmark of the EU’s stupidity and fiscal mis-management.
Blair managed to push through his own plan for regular reviews of payments, but the ‘vigorous exchange’ culminated in the French leader saying to the British one:
“You have been very rude and I have never been spoken to like this.”
This would all be jolly good fun apart from the fact that it means that the attitude of the EU federalists is so arrogant, despotic and obvious that they managed to upset someone as wet as Tony Blair. And that does scare me a bit.
Peter Hain, the former Europe minister made Welsh Secretary last week denied the row was being exaggerated by Downing Street to cover up the fact that Mr Blair had been outmanoeuvred by France and Germany. Of course, nothing gives news a ring of truth more than an official denial…
Sometimes politicians blurt out the pure unvarnished truth even against their devious instincts. I cannot beat this gem from French farm minister Herve Gaymard, who on Tuesday brushed aside British complaints over farm subsidies, saying the Brits only wanted the EU to be a free trade zone.
As the saying goes, I do believe he’s got it!
Collin May of Innocents Abroad writes:
Once again Europe demonstrates its superior sophistication in matters international. As the Telegraph reports, Europe’s foreign ministers have decided to move a meeting with the Southern African Development Community from Denmark to Mozambique. The reason for the move is simple: to accommodate the foreign minister from that pillar of humanitarianism, Zimbabwe.
EU foreign ministers were supposed to hold the meeting in Copenhagen on Nov 7 and 8. But several delegations from the 14-nation African bloc hinted that they would boycott the gathering unless the Zimbabwean government was included.
Rather inconveniently, the European Parliament passed a unanimous resolution last month demanding that Mr Mudenge, the Zimbabwe foreign minister, be banned from the meeting.
Geoffrey Van Orden, a Tory MEP and author of the resolution, called the move “an absolute affront”, saying it was yet another example of the EU’s “utter hopelessness” in sticking to a clear line in foreign policy.
“We’ve agreed to move a whole meeting to Africa to avoid an internal row within the EU over enforcement of our own sanctions policy. That’s what it amounts to”
Any chance of an explosive and fatal internal row about the whole EU? Please?!
The EU Commission would appear to be a law unto itself. Confirming his remark last week that the Euro Stability Pact is stupid, he added yesterday:
“Neither the Commission nor myself have been appointed just to enforce rules blindly, ignoring their limitations. That is what I called – and still call – stupid,” he said, addressing Euro-MPs who had summoned him to Strasbourg to explain his unauthorised ditching of Europe’s core set of economic rules.
At least he is honest. He want to power to do what he thinks is best for all of Europe and to hell with any inconvenient agreements that get in the way. Fair enough because I think EU law is also completely illegitimate nonsense too, but then I’m not the head of the European Commission.
Below is the story of the Irish referendum on the Nice Treaty. It is as clear a warning to those within the EU reach (grasp, claws etc) about the nature of its objectives and procedures as it gets. Yet it seems that the public, both in the EU and in the Eastern European countries so keen to join, do not register the rising levels of undemocratic behaviour. Just like in the tired old ‘boil a live frog’ myth1. But in this case, not only there is a frog in a pot with hot water, there is another one waiting to jump in as soon as the cooked one shrinks…
First, the Irish Government disregarded last year’s clear referendum result. The Telegraph reported in September:
Mr Ahern has virtually promised his EU counterparts that the Irish will say “Yes”, unlike last time, when they rejected the deal, thus threatening to unravel plans to enlarge the EU in 2004. This is European democracy, Henry Ford style – you can reach any answer, as long as it is yes. In simply refusing to recognise the outcome of the first referendum, the government makes the point of the No campaigners more eloquently than a thousand speeches.
Second, the governement changed the rules and amended the law on the conduct of plebiscites. Ireland used to have admirably fair rules on referendum campaigns, providing for equal airtime on state media and for the distribution to each household of a pamphlet setting out the case for each side. The government scrapped this rule. The way was thus clear for the Yes side to exploit its massive financial advantage. It outspent the anti-treaty campaign by a factor of 10 and played heavily on fears of what Ireland could lose by turning its back on Europe’s ambitions.
Third, the Irish government changed the question. Mr Ahern also rigged the question. Voters were asked to ratify Nice and, in the same vote, to oppose Irish participation in the EU army. Thus, many supporters of neutrality – a natural anti-Nice constituency – felt obliged to vote Yes. Daniel Hannan, a Conservative MEP for South East England explains what has been done to the question:
To see how outrageous this is, imagine that in a British referendum, Tony Blair phrased the question: “Do you want to join the single European currency and preserve the supremacy of the UK Parliament?”
Fourth, the Irish were facing moral blackmail. They were told that if they voted No, they would deprive 70 million people of the benefits they have themselves reaped from EU membership, even if the money has now virtually dried up. The rejection of Nice Treaty for a second time would, apparently, have delayed for at least three years the plans to bring the new members – Hungary, Poland, Latvia and the Czech Republic into the EU. Every big gun from Lech Walesa to St John Hume was wheeled out. Ireland, they all argued, has done well out of Brussels; now let’s give eastern Europe the same opportunity.2
Daniel Hannan again ‘fastidiously’ points out that given the Irish voted for enlargement…
…[it] is something of a surprise, then, to read the Nice Treaty and find that enlargement is barely mentioned: it comes in a codicil tacked on at the end, and could easily have been agreed without a referendum. Nice is about deepening rather than widening the EU.
It provides, among other things, for the scrapping of 39 national vetoes, the harmonisation of justice and home affairs and the establishment of pan-European political parties. The Euro-elites were never going to allow mere public opinion to stop all this. Once again, they have got their way.
…and concludes that:
In order to ratify an essentially undemocratic treaty, Ireland has had to debase its own democratic procedures.
Makes sense to me. In order to cook the frog, you need to increase the temperature…
1 = In the experiment a frog was dropped into a pot of hot (not boiling) water. It immediately jumped out, as would any sensible frog. Then it was placed in a pot of cool water sitting on a stove. This was more to its liking, so it swam about and lounged comfortably. The heat was turned on and raised very gradually. Soon it was hotter than the water in the first experiment, but the frog didn’t jump out. This was because there was no dramatic difference, as there had been when it was taken from room temperature and dropped into hot water. The frog became accustomed to the increased temperature as it was raised little by little. Before long the temperature was so high that the frog was unable to jump out of the pot, and it died.
2= Polish prime minister Leszek Miller, keeping a pledge he made to a local television station, drank a glass of Guinness and sang the popular folk song “I love you, Ireland” when told the Irish had definitely voted Yes.
SCENE: BRUSSELS. OFFICES OF THE EU COMMISSION. THE COMMISSIONERS ARE HUDDLED AROUND A SHEAF OF NEWSPAPER REPORTS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST.
LOUIS: Look at this…..100 per cent!!
HANS: It is truly amazing
DIRK: I wouldn’t believe it if I couldn’t see it with my own eyes
SVEN: Vote after vote, all the same; Saddam, Saddam, Saddam, Saddam, Saddam……
HANS: Yes, and how many did that cowboy Bush get, eh?
LOUIS: Precisely, Hans
DIRK: That lucky, lucky bastard
LOUIS: ‘Luck’ had nothing to do with it, Dirk
SVEN: You’re right, Louis. The Iraqi people obviously adore him
HANS: If only we could get an endorsement like this
DIRK: We, too, have our own loyal supporters
LOUIS: Yes, but they’re both getting old now
SVEN: I don’t understand. What does Hussein have that we don’t?
DIRK: Well, the Americans actually pay attention to him
LOUIS: That’s not the reason, Dirk. No, the man is obviously a campaigning genius
HANS: Clearly
SVEN: 100 per cent. 100 per cent. I just love saying those words…
LOUIS: Sven, get your hands out of your pockets, this instant
SVEN: (Sheepish) Sorry, sorry. I..er…just got a little carried away
DIRK: We must find out Saddam’s secret
HANS: Yes, that must be our top priority
LOUIS bangs his fist down on the table
LOUIS: I know exactly what we must do. We must support the American attack on Iraq!
SVEN: WHAT!!??
DIRK: Louis, are you mad?
HANS: You cannot be serious, Louis
SVEN: What about our principles?
DIRK: What about stability in the region?
HANS: What about my investments in Baghdad?
LOUIS: Listen to me, you fools. We support the American attack, they go in and do all the fighting and depose Saddam….Then we bring him to Brussels and employ him as our Public Relations Consultant.
SVEN: Louis, that’s…that’s brilliant!!
DIRK: Damn, why didn’t I think of that?
HANS: Louis, you are a Born Leader.
LOUIS: I know, Hans, I know. And, one day, all of Europe will agree with you.
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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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