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I’ve had BBC2 TV’s Newsnight on while doing other things, and two little overhearings reached out and grabbed my attention.
First, someone called, I think, Mark something, of, I think they said, csn.com (but it can’t have been that because csn.com doesn’t seem to exist), talked from Johannesburg about how George Bush should have gone to this Earth Summit beano and taken, quote, “a principled stand in favour of free market capitalism”, unquote. You don’t usually hear language like that on the BBC, which I suppose is the fault of people like me for not contriving to be on it enough. Most “principled stands” over here are for things that are bad. Mark Something is, inevitably, an American, and his point was that George W, by remaining silent about, e.g. his real opinion of “global warming”, he leaves it wide open for a successor US administration to cave in to the Transnazis. Quite right.
And the other soundbite that got my attention was from Home Secretary Jack Straw, saying in very grand looking clothes in the middle of a very grand looking speech that the European Union now “creates the impression that power is draining away from” … and then it was either Westminster or national parliaments generally, I didn’t catch which.
“Creates the impression.” I love that.
Everywhere else in Europe they know that power is draining away from national parliaments, and those who favour this, as the majority of people who matter do, say so. They know it’s happening and they’re for it. Only Britain’s pitifully mendacious European Unionists still bash away with their ever more obviously lying lie that Europe is fine because it isn’t going to change anything. We’re just going to, you know, huddle together a little.
In the long run, it could cost them the entire argument. Britain is half-joined to the EU already, and this is already having huge consequences which Britain’s Parliament can do nothing about unless it is willing to contemplate non-membership. Yet at no point in the last five decades have any big arguments in favour of what is actually happening actually been put to us, because the pro-EU line was and still is that this stuff never would happen and is still not happening.
Which means that the British people might, any decade now, decide to get out of the thing. Except that: our anti-EU politicians are no better. They don’t say what they think either.
No “principled stands” can be heard from either side.
Although I have never been a huge fan of Statewatch, a civil liberties advocacy group whose membership contains a high proportion of socialists (which I have always thought analogous to a temperance society whose membership contains a high proportion of brewers), the latest Statewatch press release is well worth reading.
They clearly lay out how the European Union is about to take a giant leap towards the sort of total surveillance super-state that the Soviet Union could only dream of implementing. As Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, comments in the press release:
EU governments claimed that changes to the 1997 EC Directive on privacy in telecommunications to allow for data retention and access by the law enforcement agencies would not be binding on Members States – each national parliament would have to decide. Now we know that all along they were intending to make it binding, “compulsory”, across Europe.
The right to privacy in our communications – e-mails, phone-calls, faxes and mobile phones – was a hard-won right which has now been taken away. Under the guise of fighting “terrorism” everyone’s communications are to be placed under surveillance.
Gone too under the draft Framework Decision are basic rights of data protection, proper rules of procedure, scrutiny by supervisory bodies and judicial review
The Panopticon super-state ‘of the future’ is now very much upon us.
 When the state watches you, dare to stare back
Although he is not the first to comment on the large (and growing) rift between the USA and Europe, James Bennett delivers up a superb analysis of the role of Tony Blair in trying to act as a bridge between them and why he may well end up as political hamburger as a result:
“As always, the biggest problem is the inherent structural one implied in Blair’s strategy: the assumption that by integrating more completely into the European Union, Britain is also serving America’s interests by being a bridge between the two continents. This is not an eccentric position; it has been the standard assumption of the American foreign policy establishment from the end of the Second World War. It is, however, wrong. Where it fails is the assumption that Europe as a whole and America are sufficiently alike that their interests will naturally be aligned.
Jim is spot on. For all his blather about ‘modernisation’, Blair has both feet firmly planted in the past, seemingly unaware of his inability to bridge the gulf between the two civilisations and equally oblivious to the harsh fact that the gulf may not be bridgeable at all. This is not just about the Middle East or Iraq; they are merely symptoms of a divergence that is economic, political, cultural and even spiritual.
In some senses, the EU and Radical Islam have more in common. Their respective visions are, for sure, not the same, but they do share the quality of being a settled view about the way the world should be and neither can really brook any meaningful alternatives, lest their own visions be undermined. For Radical Islam, the answer is endless Jihad; for the EU the answer is the Kyoto Protocol, the ICC and global regulation. In both cases, the message to America is the same: submit.
For the EU elite, America is like a rebellious teenager that they simply don’t understand. How can they insist on sovereignty when it obstructs ‘progress’? How can they insist on the right of self-defence when we know that true security comes only through concessions and negotiation? How dare they cherish Western values when we know that all values are equal? For the Eurocrats, America is not just mystifying, it’s offensive.
But there is also a deeper, darker cause of Europe’s mistrust. The political classes of Europe may disagree on many things but of on one issue there is no dissent: the European Union and the overriding importance of creating a country called ‘Europe’. Everything else, all policy, all laws and all effort must be focussed on melding together a continent’s worth of fractious nations into one monolithic political and social entity with one government, one flag, one currency, one voice etc. They can’t do it and they know in their hearts that they can’t do it. So instead of having an identity, they are creating an anti-identity and that anti-identity is anti-America. It is how the EU will define itself, being unable to define itself by any other totems.
Regardless of the fate of the Iraqi regime, America will most likely get more American and, Europe, with the cancer of post-modernism coded into its DNA, will get more anti-American. Cold War it may not be, but it will be cold. Freezing, in fact.
The British public deserves a high quality news network which ruggedly pursues the virtues of impartiality, integrity and honesty. Alas, it doesn’t have one. Instead it has the BBC. And this is not just my jaundiced opinion anymore. Now it’s official.
BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, has just signed a major development deal with the European Investment Bank (the bribery wing of the EU) worth £25 million (about $40 million) and which will enable them to produce news, education programmes and children’s programmes guaranteed to be ‘objective’.
The cynical among you might imagine that such munificence rarely comes without strings attached but you’d be wrong. In this case, it comes with bloody great mooring ropes i.e. it is an implicit condition of all EIB funding that lucky recipients must not play host to any criticism of the EU. Nice little deal, eh?
So next time you surf onto their website of link to one of their stories or hear one of their broadcasts, remember: the BBC is a whore, bought and paid for.
Lest I appear puritanical about all of this, I must stress that I have no objection to people selling or buying sexual services but it does seem so unfair that the Eurocrats get all the pleasure while the British public get screwed.
To compare Chris Patten with Marshal Petain is a disgraceful slur.
In the first place there were German troops marching through the streets of Paris and 13 million French civilian refugees trying to escape a war zone when he agreed to the Armistice. What’s Patten’s excuse?
Second, I don’t know how Patten would have coped with defending Verdun in 1916, and glad I am too…
Third, Petain , and I only discovered this recently to my great surprise, wasn’t anti-American and pro-euro-union.
Fourth, Petain only shook hands with Hitler, he didn’t kiss his …
Ah yes, we must all be thankful for those liberty-loving dudes over in Brussels for saving us from the predations of the British State, according to Antoine.
Well, he’s partly right; the British State is predatory but to look to the EU or the Human Rights Act for salvation is to jump out of the British frying pan and into the European fire. If Antoine cared to trawl through the archives of this blog alone, he would find himself confronted with ample evidence of the lunacy and petty tyranny that has been imposed on us since joining this wretched Reich. This is a trivial, but sadly typical, example
There is no paradox here except that perhaps the British State could afford to be marginally less predatory if it wasn’t for the £1.8 million per day that they must collect from the British taxpayer in order to contribute to the Euro-coffers (and thereafter distributed to Hamas among others). Now that is a f*cking paradox! Besides, we all know that it is only a matter of time before all taxes get harmonised across the EU and nothing ever, ever, ever gets harmonised downwards.
I cannot wait for Antoine’s next mind-boggling invocation: support Chinese Maoists because at least they put an end to foot-binding?
Now that we have a European ‘single market’, trade is much easier between companies across EU national borders right? Well, not necessarily.
In today’s Sunday Telegraph, the nightmares experienced by a British fireworks company trying to do its lawful business across Europe highlights the reality of Europe’s so-called single market.
It is a rare treat when you get to see the seeds of destruction actually being germinated so please take note of this latest pronouncement of Romano Prodi
“According to the Financial Times, Mr Prodi and other EU commissioners have discussed the possibility of having direct elections in order to give the future president a massive democratic mandate. However, they have concluded that it is almost impossible to run a meaningful election campaign all across the EU.”
So Mr.Prodi thinks that future EU Presidents should be appointed by horse-trading and deal-broking (in smoke-free rooms, of course). No, that is not what he actually says but that is what he means.
For all the high-minded ideals and blather about human rights and democracy from the apparatchicks of Brussels, there is no consensus in Europe, no demos in Europe, there is no ‘Europe’ and if there is one eternal truism of politics that is beyond argument it is that no system of government can rule without the consent of the majority of the governed. A government of and by a ruling elite will always fall. Always.
…Bono 
And not for nothing either, as he has taken it upon himself to act as a tool for the Holy Belgian Empire and give the Irish people a sound telling-off for voting ‘No’ to the Nice Treaty.
“For god sake, if we miss this chance, what are we then?”
Well, obviously, a bunch of unilateralist simplisme Irish cowboys, that’s what.
“When I participate in meetings with politicians in Europe then they always bring this up…”
‘Louis, Sven, Dirk, come quickly, it’s a famous rock star. At last, we can enjoin a profound discussion on the socio-political consequences of Eastward expansion of the existing regulatory framework’.
“They cannot understand that Ireland did what it did with the Nice-treaty. I noted that a lot of politicians became very angry. I think that a ‘No’ will put Ireland in a selfish light…”
Did you hear that, you scruffy lot in Dublin? If you keep exercising your constitutional right to choose, then the Brussels politicians are going to get very, very, very angry with you. I mean, really angry. They’re going to hold an Angry Conference and share their anger. Then they are going to pass at least a few thousand more regulations in pure anger. And then strike primitive, aggressive postures and denounce you, angrily. So just watch your step.
Bono? Is that a proper name? It can’t be his real name, surely? Perhaps it stands for something. Somebody once told me that it is Gaelic for ‘dickhead’.
The recent brouhaha over the ‘Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein €uro’ ad by anti-€uro activists, showing British comedian Rik Mayhall as Hitler, does make one wonder if the same people were protesting in front of shows by Mel Brooks when he used Hitler (in three movies, no less) as a source of humour.
The following advert, which features the well known red triangle trade mark of that bastion of macho virtues, Bass Breweries Ltd. would presumably have had the likes of pro-euro ‘comedian’ Eddy Izard howling about ‘homophobia’ in much the same way he has protested against the use of the Hitler image on grounds of ‘taste’ by his political enemies (never mind he himself has done a well know ‘Hitler skit’).
By comparison I was first shown this Bass Breweries advert by a floridly homosexual libertarian with whom I am acquainted… and he thought it was hilarious. Is there something about being a statist that makes a person not just morally comfortable with using the threat of violence to reorder free social interactions on a massive scale but also intrinsically humourless?
That is in effect what President of the Convention on the Future of Europe, Giscard d’Estaing said last Tuesday when discussing the implications of another refusal of the Irish voters to sanction the enlargement of the EU:
“I do not want to go into the details. I am not a foreign minister and that is not my role. However, the question is: If there is a goal, you cannot ignore it. Enlargement is necessary. Then we have to take initiatives to make the legal basis for enlargement,” Mr Giscard said in Denmark.
The advocates of corporate statism are determined to have their way and piffle about ‘democracy’ is only used when it suits them. If Ireland vote ‘No’ again, regardless of Romano Prodi’s claim ‘there is no Plan B’, it is clear that the mere wishes of the Irish people will not be allowed to stand in the way of Europe’s ‘Manifest Destiny’. 
And I love this even more.
“Campaigners against the European single currency were accused on Tuesday of insulting the memories of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust by likening euro supporters to Adolf Hitler.
My, my how touchy these people are! I rather think the point of the advertising campaign is to illustrate (quite correctly) that the dream of a United Europe was among Hitler’s visions. Now I am always wary of reductio ad Hitlerum as a base emotional tool but, as it happens, this one is merited.
“The Commission was unreseved in its criticism of the campaign. Jean-Christophe Filori, acting commission spokesman, said on Wednesday that it was in “appalling bad taste” and “beneath contempt.” He added that such an act only pandered to “base xenophobic instincts.”
Since when has an aversion to Hitler consitituted ‘xenophobia’? Oh yes, silly me, ever since ‘xenophobia’ became another base, emotional tool.
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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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