17 December, 2014

Circus8: 2014 'Year of fooling the People' ends with Council's coup by press release!

Europe today is like a tennis club. Imagine you paid fees to a tennis club and that gave you right to elect the executive committee. All the membership agreed in a vote that the executive should be reduced in size and that it should no longer be composed exclusively of white, 60+, male, left-handed, millionaires. Then these same millionaires decided they would take absolutely no notice of the paying membership. They insisted unilaterally that the tennis club needed them even though everyone in the club paid equal fees and wanted change. Would you say it was democracy? The tennis club membership then took a vote of the whole membership. The executive committee refused to recognize the result of votes and referendums, not once but multiple times.
The year 2014 was declared the Year of the Citizen by the Commission. You might remember that 2013 was also declared the Year of the Citizen. No one asked the citizen in either case! The Eurocrats were not ashamed at a unilateral seizure of millions of euros of taxpayers’ money to pay a ‘citizen’s campaign‘. It brought them no success. According to the official report, it was ‘not effective‘ nor did it reach the ‘media or the citizens‘!
So what happened? Were these tricks of the Council and Commission sufficient to fool the people in the election ear for the European Parliament? Did it quieten objections to the political parties parachuting their favourites into the fat-paying Commission jobs?
The Juncker Commission wants to boost the economy by creating a 315 billion euro fund for loans to 'boost jobs and growth.' Will it work with an already devalued currency? How does it compare with the multi-TRILLION stimulus that OPEC, the oil cartel are giving to the world economy? Why is the Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi saying that he has convinced his fellow OPEC member States that oil supplies should manipulated together even if they have to bring the price down from well over 110 dollars a barrel to 20 dollars?
Have the euro crises and other distractions covered the politicians’ predominant moral turpitude? The latter arises where leaders fool the people on major issues while giving the impression from minor events that they are acting fairly and squarely.
What is European democracy‘s major problem? In contrast to our tennis club, there are no restrictions on candidates for the Commission. They can be black, yellow or white, over or under sixty years, they may be rich or poor and they may be right- or left-handed writers. All citizens can be possible candidates for the Commission. What candidates can’t be, according to the oath that all Commissioners take, is the following:
  • They can’t be active members of a political party;
  • They can’t be tied to an interest like a commercial company, a trade union or a consumer group.
  • They cannot seek or take instructions from national governments;
  • They must be independent like a judge in a Court of Law.
Governments believe they, against the treaty law, can give instructions to their Commissioners and others in closed door, secret meetings from which the public and press are excluded. Further, the governmental political parties completely ignored the treaty articles about how fair elections European Parliament elections should be run. They have yet yielded to treaty obligations for elections for organized civil society. These measures have been in the treaties since 1951.
The greatest political crimes are perpetrated when CLIQUES of ‘democratic representatives’ change the honest and just rules and allow the electors only to vote on minor matters. Thus they maintain power without proper supervision.
That is the disorder that the European Union is suffering from at the present.
Former French President Valery Giscard D’Estaing condemned the Council’s lack of respect for the Constitutional or Lisbon treaties he helped formulate. ‘There needs to be a more scrupulous respect of the treaties.‘ More than a decade ago it was agreed by all that the size of the European Commission was to be reduced to around a DOZEN people, max.
It was recommended by former members of the Commission. It was demanded by members of organized civil society. It was agreed by all in Convention on the draft treaty. Former European Commission President Jacques Delors said that European Commission must be not exceed about a dozen members plus the president and foreign affairs representative.
It was not only demanded a decade ago. It had been demanded for decades previously from the first expansion of the European Communities in 1973. A small independent Commission with four other independent OPEN institutions are the basis of the supranational system that brought peace to Europe.
So why does the Juncker Commission have 28 Commissioners?
Its size and composition is the BIGGEST democratic issue facing the European public. It is the key institution in the Community method. The Commission is not the politicians’ plaything. Democracy belongs to all the people, all the time.
Reducing its size to a small number of totally independent, qualified personalities has long been the most controversial of EU reforms. The public are sick and tired of party nepotism. Political party pals or defeated/ retired/ expendable politicians are parachuted into high-paying Brussels jobs. Why doesn’t Europe have a sleek group of highly respected impartial and independent Commissioners?
There is a simple answer.
The politicians have fooled the public. Have they fooled all the public? Have they fooled it all the time?
What are the implications of the European Council’s Decree to dismantle Europe’s Community system, made furtively over a fine meal at its 22 May 2013 closed-door meeting?
  • It denies qualified citizens their democratic rights to become Commissioners (Art 10 TEU).
  • It destroys any democratic purpose for voting in the upcoming European elections.
  • It denies the vast majority of European citizens a voice in  Europe’s governance system.
  • It  changes the Community Method into a party political Cartel, run by who knows who. This raises the danger that it might be captured by European of international cartels who act against the citizen’s rights and freedoms.
  • It reverses all the treaties that say the European Commission should be totally impartial and that its members must not be politicians’ cronies or take instructions from any government, big or small.
Oh! perhaps you did not even hear or read about the Council’s Decree on 22 May 2013. You did NOT miss the debate! The EU’s 27 political leaders did not permit one. Democracy was changed without any public consultation.  The 27 politicians present did not expect you to debate it after they made their decision as Super-Citizens. They acted just like an economic Cartel acts on the market, they secretly control supply and demand of democracy! Like any Cartel it thrives on secrecy.
You did not read about it. It was not mentioned in the final communique of 27 Heads of Government and two of the EU’s many presidents.  You did not hear about it. European Council President van Rompuy and Commission President Barroso did not speak about it at their press conference. Neither did German Chancellor Merkel, nor French President Hollande, nor the British, in the person of Mr Cameron, who say they defend democracy.
I heard only the Irish Taoiseach make the briefest of statements about it at his press conference and quickly rushed on to other matters. The politicians purposely engineered the Agenda and Agenda Notes so that this major decision of the meeting would not appear in the Conclusions!
The control of the Commission by any group of political parties or States means that the Citizen can say Goodbye to impartial EU government. This key supranational institution is designed to safeguard freedom, fight financial fraud and corruption. It is the world’s first institution able to take on international Cartels of companies, international finance or workers and bring them to Court. Cartels involve, for example, business executives from different companies colluding in secret to fix prices and deny competition in the market. The consumer is ripped off.
Cartels may range from many small manufacturers that ‘fix’ prices of bathroom fittings to major internet operators who misuse monopoly powers to energy cartels like OPEC and its subsidiaries that raise the price of oil from a free market value of 5 to 10 dollars a barrel as in 1999 to 147 dollars recently, despite the huge Iraqi and other new fields coming on stream.  Raising of prices has had a depressing multi-trillion euro effect on the economy and employment. Dropping oil prices has destroyed industries (especially alternative energies to oil).
Now the cartel led by Saudi Arabia is dropping oil prices to record lows approaching 50 dollars and aiming lower. It does it simply by opening up the oil taps. A free market does not exist. (In 1999 when the oil price fell to below ten dollars, it exposed what was really a free market price.) When prices rose to 147 dollars a barrel, OPEC cartel was extracting about ten per cent of global GNP! Wow! That really is global blackmail!
How much does the oil/gas cartel filch from the pockets of European citizens by manipulating the price? When the price dropped just 20% to 83 dollars, the world economy received a stimulus package of 1.1 trillion dollars! With a price now fallen by more than 50%, the stimulus is in trillions not a few hundred billions. These enormous sums of money show the power of oil-drug Cartel to blackmail Western societies. Most of what the West gains now is what OPEC blood-sucks from industrialized economies by posting artificially high prices most of the time.
Why did the Saudis now purposefully lower prices? Don’t they lose profits? Yes. But they gain something far more important. A low price completely wipes out the competition of higher cost shale oil and gas. It makes North Sea oil unprofitable. Israel has also uncovered vast oil and gas reserves in the sea between it and Cyprus. The Saudis are so keen on the low price of oil at the moment that they are willing — perhaps for the first time in history — to sell their Saudi oil to Israel!
Why are the Arab oil-producers opening the oil spigots? (The Iranians are against this strategy. They need the money for their Iranian nuclear programme.) The Saudis and Arab oil-producers need to keep the West addicted to oil. The cartel action decimates alternative energy projects. It thus ensures longer lasting oil-dependence when they can eventually raise the oil price in the future. With a protracted period of low prices, financiers will refuse to fund any project that challenges Saudi oil and Gulf gas. Strategically, it wrecks their major competitor– Russia. Russia produces more oil than Saudi Arabia and its whole economy depends on it, including its political stability. Oil and gas are major levers in the global ideological struggle between Islam and Judeo-Christian civilization.
The effect of low oil prices will give a huge boost to the European economy. If Europe had a proper Community style government with an Energy Community as Schuman and the founding fathers recommended, it would have already been enjoying massive benefits for several decades. That is why a non-party political, totally independent European Commission is vitally important. Its election method, composition, and the means to dismiss it for incompetence and corruption concern every citizen and voter. In dishonestly attempting to seize control of it, politicians, themselves, acting in a political Cartel of major parties and excluding their many critics, have declared war on the citizen’s rights and liberties. They are not trusted. Opinion polls show record low trust ratings of  politicians, amid economic and financial corruption and the self-serving construction of the euro.
Party cartel control obfuscates democracy. No change of policy occurs. Politicians can milk the taxpayer’s golden cow. Politicians have selected themselves as Super-Citizens.
The party machines now illegally select the Commission from among their cronies. President van Rompuy himself declared that the ‘governments’ act more like party coalitions dividing up the Commission cake in secret. Instead of a Gaullist Europe it has become Europe ‘a la carte des parties‘. And the parties are now disdained by the European public. The electorate refuses to vote!
The crucial and unanswered question is: Who controls the party machines, pays them subsidies and in backdoor deals sets their policy agenda? Control of the Commission by national government representatives makes backdoor deals the rule to the detriment of weak and small States. Making only politicians eligible as Commissioners as a class of Super-Citizens is contrary to elementary Human Rights of 500 million citizens.
How did this abuse arise?
It is not who votes who rules the government. It is who writes the rules about the voting. The EU has 28 self-serving voting systems not ONE Statute as required by the treaties. That has been in the treaties since 1951 — without governments implementing it. First governments refused to have any election at all, until Parliament took them to Court. Instead of implementing the article, each EU government  fixes the voting system to bar opponents, not to help them.
The governments did the same sort of thing for the Commission which was originally a politician-free zone. Now the Council wishes to hold its thumb on the scales of the ‘honest-broker’ system, the Commission. It makes it dishonestly partisan. It wants to bias the magistrates. The European Council is making clear that no matter what people think, nor how they vote, nor how they protest, a small clique of politicians will decide the result. A Cartel of politicians controls the market of democracy.
Crisis will lead to further crisis. Politicians individually and collectively have failed their ‘stress tests’. MEPs seem quite willing to contort legislation when offered bribes by investigative reporters. Who knows what they do with powerful lobbyists and multinationals?  This is the reason that Schuman and the Founding Fathers insisted that the Council should hold open sessions, something it has refused to do. Why? What is so secret about discussing how citizens’ democracy should work?
The Cartel welcomed crony governments of the left, right and centre into the euro. The crony system does not seek to reform. It admits governments that everyone knew to be corrupt and who cooked the statistics. Then when the inevitable problems arose, they created new money institutions — not subject to the European Court of Justice — that involve handouts five or seven times the amount of money in the entire EU budget!
These same politicians feel they are above the law such as the European Court of Justice. It is their right to deny referendums on treaties, to ignore referendums that are negative, to close down national radio and television as they did in Greece — without even a parliamentary vote or legal power. The free press as the Fourth Estate is an enemy of cronyism.
Do you wish to place your future in the hands of a Politburo with powers without real democratic responsibility? When did it happen?
This latest antidemocratic and corrupt decision on voting was made as the Heads of  Government gathered at their lunch table on Wednesday 22 May 2013. It was a very short European Council, even though it dealt with tax fraud and energy — Europe’s major problem. The unannounced third topic was  to change European democracy — forever!
There was no public debate. Nor did any leader want to start one tomorrow with the public or the press.
The European Council acted like any tinpot dictatorship under Franco, Salazar, Stalin or Hitler,  under which many States formerly suffered . When everyone’s eyes were busy elsewhere it issued a fait accompli, a five- sentence press release!
Now we have democratic collapse by Press Release. This is a step worse than Democratic Abuse by Treaty that populations have thrown out by referendums!
Here is the release:
P R E S S
Dirk De Backer – Spokesperson of the President
Brussels, 22 May 2013
EUCO 119/13
PRESSE 207
The European Council decides on the number of members of the European Commission
The European Council adopted today a decision on the composition of the European Commission. This decision provides that the Commission will continue to consist of a number of members equal to the number of Member States. This number also includes the Commission President and the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice President of the Commission (176/12).
The decision, which in effect maintains the current practice, will apply from 1 November 2014.
In view of its effect on the functioning of the Commission, the European Council will review this decision well in advance of the appointment of the first Commission following the date of accession of the 30th Member State or the appointment of the Commission succeeding that due to take up its duties on 1 November 2014, whichever is earlier.
Background
The Lisbon Treaty provided that as of 1 November 2014 the Commission would consist of a number of members corresponding to two thirds of the number of Member States, unless the European Council unanimously decided otherwise.
Today’s decision puts into effect the political agreement reached at the European Council meetings of 11-12 December 2008 (17271/1/08) and 18-19 June 2009 (11225/2/09) where the heads of state or government noted the concerns of the Irish people with respect to the Lisbon Treaty and agreed to continue the principle of one Commissioner per Member State.
Like a typically ineffective dictatorship, this press release provides a link to the key document that authorizes this overturning of the ‘inconvenient’ Lisbon Treaty articles. Check 176/12 that is the Decision of the European Council. It is
  • a document whose drafting dates from 2012
  • it is undated;
  • it is unsigned !!
  • it makes no reference to any democratic authority, such as the European people’s voice, referendums, the European Parliament, national parliaments, the Economic and Social Committee or any other Consultative Committee. It refers to no economic debate except the bribe made on the second Irish referendum. Nor does it explain why under European Council ‘Democracy’ the first was invalid and a second was called for. Everywhere else in the world a No means No.
Where the document says ‘Decision of the European Council’ it really means DECREE. The Tsarist Russians would call it an Ukase. It has no democratic base, authority or legitimacy.
It is a bluff because the European Council is trying to pass off as EU law what amounts to a secret, unilateral fait accompli.
In other words, the European Council wants to change the democratic system of the original treaties by a Press Release and by an UNSIGNED, IRRELEVANT DRAFT document. Furthermore its authority is a Spokesman, a paid official not a democratically elected representative.
This press release also puts a deceitful spin on history. In December 2008, the Lisbon Treaty was not active.
It was dead! In fact it was twice dead. The European Council  declared it was alive! This is what the European Council acting as a Politburo declared:
The European Council re-affirms that the Treaty of Lisbon is considered necessary in order to help the enlarged Union to function more efficiently, more democratically and more effectively including in international affairs. With a view to enabling the Treaty to enter into force by the end of 2009, the European Council, while respecting the aims and objectives of the Treaties, has defined the following path.
On the composition of the Commission, the European Council recalls that the Treaties currently in force require that the number of Commissioners be reduced in 2009. The European Council agrees that provided the Treaty of Lisbon enters into force, a decision will be taken, in accordance with the necessary legal procedures, to the effect that the Commission shall continue to include one national of each Member State.
The treaty proposal had just been rejected by the Irish electorate in a referendum. A number of other countries had also rejected the Lisbon Treaty in its former appearance as the Constitutional Treaty — France (55%) and the Netherlands (62%). The British, Czechs, Irish, Polish and the Danish who had been promised referendums did not have one as the politicians expected even more crushing rejections.
The Cartel politicians decided to impose the Treaty by autocratic force. The Constitutional Treaty was shorn of a few clauses. Important ones? Judge for yourself. They deleted the article providing for a European flag and a European Anthem. They are no longer official. Hadn’t you noticed? The Commission’s Berlaymont Building and all other EU buildings are surrounded by DOZENS of European flags!
The Constitutional Treaty was rewritten as amendments to the Treaty of the European Economic Community. (The Rome Treaty of Euratom, the non-proliferation treaty, was not affected.) As a list of amendments, it was incomprehensible as a functioning system. Nevertheless, some Parliaments such as Hungary passed it even before the parliamentarians had received the consolidated text! The European Parliament to its great shame refused even to publish the complete text!
Then the French changed their Constitution so that the French government could refuse another referendum. The other governments refused to hold referendums again. Except the Irish! They voted. They rejected it. They thought the Lisbon Treaty rubbish or dangerous. They were told to vote again and this time Yes. If they did they could retain an Irish Commissioner (to guard Irish interests).  They would be more than OK. They would also get ample EU money to boost the economy. Tell that to them now!
The Lisbon Treaty was not agreed by many peoples in the Member States, either because governments refused to recognize the referendums, or allow one to take place or because they even changed the Constitution to refuse people the right to reject the Lisbon Treaty, as they had the Constitutional Treaty (with which it was practically identical, except for a flag and a song!).
This is the chronology of the anti-democratic slide to Politburo takeover:
1951 Treaty of Paris with 9 Commissioners, eight nominated by Member States and one selected by these eight without recourse to State nomination. This Commissioner is mandated by the others. The Community’s major principle was to oppose to any form of dangerous cartel and restive practice. Hence the Commission must be independent, non-ideological,  impartial and act as ‘economic magistrates’ to ensure rules are obeyed for the expansion of production and lowering of prices in a single market.
1957 Treaties of Rome EEC with 9 Commissioners; Euratom with 5 Commissioners from the six Member States. The treaty of Paris specified that numbers may be reduced. It did not permit an increased number for these States. Europe’s three Communities show that the Commission must be independent of national governments.  Instead, following de Gaulle’s war on the Community,  governments increasingly parachuted their own political representatives rather than selecting impartial Europeans.
At the turn of the century abuse was rife. The public objected to the constant parachuting of politicians into the Commission. Politicians were dominating and States offering independent candidates were fewer and rarer. Instead of a small independent group the Commission became bloated with overpaid political cronies.
An Amsterdam Treaty protocol and the 2000 Nice Treaty (article 213) then limited all States to one Commissioner only, forgetting conveniently that the treaties say nowhere that a State has a right to a Commissioner. (The treaties say the opposite — which is why when there were six Member States, the Euratom Community had only five Commissioners.) The Commission was becoming a club of wall-to-wall political cronies. With the major enlargement of 2004, something had to be done.
The Convention presided by former French President Giscard d’Estaing drafted a Constitutional treaty where the Commission had to be reduced in number. This made clear that the Commission was not a dumping ground for politicians, one for each State.
With the enlargement after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a Protocol to the Amsterdam treaty specified that the number of Commissioners should not exceed the number of Member States.
In 2008 the existing treaty of Nice required that the Commission must be reduced in numbers to avoid overstaffing and turning it into an international secretariat.
The Irish people were refused a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty in 2005 or 6. They rejected the Lisbon Treaty in June 2008 by 53.4 to 46.6%. In October 2009 the Irish were humiliatingly told to think again in a second referendum.
If you check the 2008 European Council Communique quoted by the Spokesman, you will see that the European Council admits it has no democratically solid basis for the Lisbon Treaty. Therefore no legally sound basis exists  either (a) to accept the Lisbon Treaty draft against the clearly stated wish of the people and  (b) to change a difficult article in the Treaty that the politicians had forced through parliaments by block votes.
The decision to accept the treaty (to be called the Lisbon Treaty) that had been rejected by Irish voters was made in the middle of the night. None of the CITIZENS of 27 nation States were consulted. The Communique admits that it was a political decision, decided by politicians. It does not say it was for their own benefit and not the public’s but that was obvious.
The big problem was Ireland. Irish voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty. Under any normal democracy that would have dumped the Treaty in the bin. The European Council meeting after midnight also agreed to bribe the Irish electorate who had rejected the Lisbon Treaty as undemocratic. They said that Ireland must vote again— itself an extraordinary affront to democratic procedure. The bribe consisted of overturning the Lisbon Treaty’s stipulations that the Commission should not be European and composed of a small number of Commissioners. It would become international and composed of National Commissioners and by implication give party politicians in government the right to chose one of their cronies to be a Commissioner. No article of the Lisbon, constitutional or any other treaty gives governments powers to invest cronies with this office.
There are NO SUPER-Citizens in the EU who have preferences and exclude normal citizens. The Council's document supposedly
  • supporting their ability to nominate national representatives (against treaty law) and
  • only from political parties of the socialist, liberal and 'Christian democratic' persuasion lacks any democratic basis. (It goes against treaty law and a discrimination against the CITIZENS and their human rights to participate).
It is a fraud. It has no democratic approval or authority. It is merely a self-serving splinter for political fraudsters.
http://register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/12/st00/st00176.en12.pdf
This occurred after all in the first Year of the Citizen, one of two consecutive ones decreed by the Party Machines. Do you expect the party Machines to open up a debate with the Citizen about such a trivial matter as Democracy? This new decree says: 'European governance is the private business of government 'fixers' and parties! Citizens do not stick your noses in it!'
In short it says that the European Commission can remain a dumping ground of national politicians -- in complete violation of treaty law. Cronyism is to become the new law.
The British who say the EU must be reformed failed their electorate. They chose as their nominee for the Commission, a party politician who was formerly called a lobbyist. He was parachuted into Brussels with a high salary but no public support or knowledge. No matter what the public think of him or the Prime Minister’s choice, this is an egregious example of corrupt cronyism. The treaties exclude politicians from applying for the post of Commissioner as they say that Commissioners should
‘be chosen on the grounds of their general competence and European commitment from persons whose independence is beyond doubt.’
I will avoid saying anything about the general competence of politicians. However there are many, many people in Europe, in European NGOs, in the offices of the Ombudsmen, in Law, Business, workers’ and Human Rights who have a great deal more competence than many politicians show. They may also have independence, that is, the ability to be impartial, unprejudiced and non-ideological.
Politicians are automatically excluded from any candidature because a political party tends to be ideological. That is, it has preferences of one side in society over another. Such people cannot be considered ‘honest-brokers.’
It is a designation that thumbs its nose at the public.
The Governments continue their practice of a bloated Byzantine bureaucracy. This was initiated by de Gaulle and his anti-Community henchmen. Its aim? to turn  the Commission into a political secretariat.
The Community system is now being reshaped into a Dictatorship, not of the Proletariat, but of the Party Machines. The same party machines have failed to attract even a half of the electorate. New anti-cartel parties are springing up with large followings everywhere.
It is not only the EU that is reached a crisis of democracy, but the national governments too.

17 November, 2014

Circus7: Contempt for a public oath of impartiality underscores EU Commission's illegitimacy




Commissioners are obliged by Treaty law to swear or affirm on their honour that they are absolutely impartial and independent. They must pledge not to take any instructions or seek instructions from governments, political parties or any interest groups or any ‘entities’, that is, anybody else.
Is that clear? Believers in divine justice in our democratic Judeo-Christian society, make an oath or affirmation before God. Those who are agnostic or atheists make an affirmation before their conscience (as their record for the Day of Judgement).
So far the Juncker Commission — whose members deem themselves to be in office — has contemptuously failed to take the oath of office. Today they are merely politicians, selected by governments as their personal and national representatives. This is contrary to the letter and spirit of treaties since 1951 — even  of the misbegotten Lisbon Treaty that violated national referendums.
Over the years, as Europe’s honest broker showed itself less than honest, the Commission tried to make the oath an obscure and hidden operation. Was that because of a bad conscience about funding wasteful wine and milk lakes, meat mountains, butter bergs and politicians’ pet projects of useless airports, bridges and motorways to nowhere?
Taking an oath of office should be a celebration of legitimacy and public support. It follows general national practice in democracies. Members of governments, privy counsellors, members of national parliament generally take an oath of office BEFORE they take office. The US President takes his oath of office very publicly — with a whole day of celebration and before the widest audience possible. It is all broadcast on radio, television and the internet.
Why does the European Commission feel it is above the law?
A European Commission that refuses to take a very open and public oath of impartiality and independence while freely drawing its salary is acting contrary to Treaty law. This requires that they make a ‘solemn undertaking‘ BEFORE they start work. Why wait? What are they up to now?  Making inappropriate deals? Perhaps obscuring problems and crises that may involve personal, party or national interests? Do they think they are permitted to violate the Treaties before they take the oath?
It is no argument to say ‘We will take the oath later, when we have time.‘ It puts the office in contempt. Where does logic or law say an oath of impartiality or any oath can act retrospectively?
Commissioners do not take office UNTIL they have pledged their suitability in an oath of impartiality. If they doubt this ask the judges at the European Court of Justice! Their oath is made as their entry into office. The President of the Court confirms the Commissioners' oath to be the essential link BEFORE installation to office.
Why have 28 Candidate Commissioners, who should encapsulate honest politics, all remained silent about the issue?
The following is the oath of independence they have to agree to. Just reading it makes it plain that it must be sworn or affirmed BEFORE they start work.


  • “Having been appointed as a Member of the European Commission by the European Council, following the vote of consent by the European Parliament
  • I solemnly undertake:
    • to respect the Treaties and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in the fulfilment of all my duties;
    • to be completely independent in carrying out my responsibilities, in the general interest of the Union;
    • in the performance of my tasks, neither to seek nor to take instructions from any Government or from any other institution, body, office or entity;
    • to refrain from any action incompatible with my duties or the performance of my tasks.
    “I formally note the undertaking of each Member State to respect this principle and not to seek to influence Members of the Commission in the performance of their tasks.
    “I further undertake to respect, both during and after my term of office, the obligation arising therefrom, and in particular the duty to behave with integrity and discretion as regards the acceptance, after I have ceased to hold office, of certain appointments or benefits.”
    If Commissioners only take this oath months after taking office, does that mean that they can say in Court that what they did illegally before taking the oath is permissible as they are not obliged to be impartial before? Hardly. That is why the oath should be taken immediately and very publicly.
    The first oath was not made in secret. Nor in the building of the European Court of Justice. It was made in the most public place, the City Hall of Luxembourg, before a big audience and national observers. A Court environment is useful to remind Commissioners that they have a legal obligation to be impartial. If they are not, they can be taken to Court.
    But what is more important for the EU as a whole is that this oath should be widely known by all European citizens. All the ‘entities‘, the interest groups and all the many lobbies and lobbyists should see and hear it. They should know it is illegal to communicate with the Commission in secret. The treaties give specific means so that the Commission can be fully informed about all issues in Europe without secret lobbying of governments, companies and political parties.
    Today it makes more sense that the oath should be taken in Brussels, before the public and the press, and broadcast to the whole Continent and the world. The Commission should act like any mature democracy does. Why? Because the entire population of more than half a billion people in the EU need to hear that all Commissioners pledge absolutely that they will not receive instructions, nor seek them. They will make decisions according to their conscience and as openly as possible.
    Their oath, like that of the judges of the European Court of Justice, is intended to be taken before they start work. In the case of the Commission the oath is even more detailed than the judges’ about the impartiality that they must acknowledge and follow. Any deviation from impartiality will bring them to the European Court of Justice.
    At the moment the Commissioners have not promised anything. Yet the Commission is in a crisis about tax fraud, tax evasion and avoidance  and a number of other serious matters.
    How will the unsworn Commission act now towards the citizen — who pays their salaries? What about ‘tax havens‘ for the world’s biggest companies? If the global companies do not pay tax, the burden falls on small companies and poor individuals.
    Consider the matter of the State extracting your personal or small company taxes. You are brought to a Court of Law. How would you react if faced with a judge highly prejudiced and partisan against you? Distrust and fear.
    How about a judge who was directly chosen by ‘entities and interest groups‘ who have already taken 40 percent of your income? For your case, they especially chose a judge who has declared and demonstrated his partisanship for decades. He maintained with pride his strong links to parties and specific interest groups.
    I am not referring to a mere magistrate but the most powerful judge in the land. What if the judge was involved in multi-billion euro deals with the very people who were stripping you bare of your meager resources?
    Wouldn’t you cry: INJUSTICE! Your whole being would revolt against the system. All Courts across the land would lose public confidence, their legitimacy would be reviled. People would forms groups based on their separate outrages to overturn and destroy the system. Society would be divided between the rulers and the skeptics. Europe will fragment. It’s happening.
    What are the most powerful actors against individuals in society? Many would consider governments wield the most power. Consider how much tax they raise from society. They usually take up to half of all income.
    2012 Tax on national income
    Country
    % burden
    Austria
    43.1%
    Belgium
    45.4%
    Bulgaria
    27.9%
    Cyprus
    35.5%
    Czech Rep.
    35%
    Denmark
    48.1%
    Estonia
    32.5%
    Finland
    44.1%
    France
    45.0%
    Germany
    39.1%
    Greece
    33.7%
    Hungary
    39.2%
    Ireland
    28.7%
    Italy
    44.0%
    Latvia
    27.9%
    Lithuania
    27.2%
    Luxembourg
    39.3%
    Malta
    33.6%
    Netherlands
    39.0%
    Poland
    32.5%
    Portugal
    32.4%
    Romania
    28.3%
    Slovakia
    28.3%
    Slovenia
    37.6%
    Spain
    31.8%
    Sweden
    44.2%
    United Kingdom
    35.4%
    EU28:                       39.4%   (Eurostat 2014).
    History tells us that the State provides benefits but also abuses its powers. Some governmental groups, for example political parties, are assumed to incorporate the needs and interests of sections of the population. But their policies are often made in secret and donors to party funding often dictate the policies.
    In the UK House of Parliament, whose members like to consider themselves the paragons of democracy, the following exchanges took place on 10 July 2013:
    Ed Miliband, leader of the Opposition Labour Party: The Prime Minister ‘ is owned by a few millionaires at the top of society and everyone knows it.’
    PM Cameron: ‘The trades unions own you (Mr Miliband) lock, stock and block vote. … They buy the candidates (for Parliament), they buy the policies, they buy the leader.’
    Some consider that large corporations now detain the world’s most formidable powers. Even by 1900s commercial companies represented around half of the world’s largest entities, bigger than many national States. Today Corporations are huge. They provide goods and services for the public. They act globally. But who really controls them? Certainly not the public, it seems.
    But the Commission is the world’s first international anti-cartel agency. For good reason. Cartels were the major cause of World War One. If the Commissioners are not staunchly impartial and seen to be impartial, how can the Commission control global cartels, global tax fraud, international mafias and illicit foreign exploitation of the EU’s internal energy and financial markets?
    Corporations want maximum profits, minimum taxation. Hence they want to make secret tax arrangements with some governments so that they can avoid paying tax in all the Member States. And then the other States complain of lost revenues. The corporations work such ‘fiscal competition‘ to their own benefit.  Multinationals can parachute their flexible ‘headquarters‘ into the most favourable State. Small States offer ‘sweetheart deals’. That means depriving other States of tax, but it means that small States can benefit hugely. If they tax the multinationals only a small percentage, it is a major boost to the small national budget. The large States– which might have large revenues if taxed at ordinary rates — are left high and dry. ‘European‘ tax has in theory been paid.
    A dog-fight behind closed doors between them and tax administrations occurs. Governments are desperate to be able to tax the most lucrative corporations in the world. The public does not see the counter-struggle of the multinationals who fob off one administration against another and select the cheapest option. The Robber State is robbed and conned.
    Now consider the public. What is their view? Because the corporations are paying low tax, the general public in all countries is paying higher personal tax.
    Tax is levied by the State or rather the party politicians. They want to remain in power. How can they go about it? They usually try to bribe the public by offering ‘services‘, by creating ‘infrastructure’, by providing what they call ‘benefits‘ to certain groups who will vote for them. The also create bureaucracies and inefficiencies. Is their choice always correct and fair? Obviously not! That is why one lot of rascals gets thrown out in elections and another lot of rascals gets put in place.
    However, nowadays it is harder and harder for the average citizen to distinguish between parties of ‘left‘, ‘right‘ or ‘centre‘. They seem all to be working on the same agenda. Some suspect this is ‘fleece the public‘ and maintain a well-paid career. Youngsters leave university, join the party apparatus and they spend the rest of their life in the service of the party. Nowadays it is common for politicians to have never held any other job or earned a proper salary in their life.
    The main distinction people see nowadays is between newly formed parties that wish to leave or destroy the European Union with its obvious corruption, and those who wish to maintain the status quo.
    How can the honest, hardworking citizen find an exit to this sorry tale of corrupt entanglement and self-interest by
    • States
    • Politicians
    • Corporations
    • Cartels and paper companies
    • Trades unions
    • Other interest groups
    • External cartels and exploiters?
    As Giscard d’Estaing reminded Brussels institutions recently, the Treaty says the Commission should be reduced to 13 or at maximum 15 persons. No public debate has been conducted, nor has public approval been given that justifies the Council delinquency in demanding 28 Commissioners, one for each Prime Minister.
    • The European Commission is not the exclusive zone for hiring party old politicians and excluding eminent members of the public who are not party political. The concept of the Commission being made up of only national representatives is repellent, odious and an affront to the Community’s supranational principle.
    • A small, impartial Commission should be in permanent dialogue with duly-elected Consultative Committees who represent the whole European Community, its economy, its regions and its energy resources.
    • The Council of Ministers is the institution for expressing national positions. The Commission is not their secretariat.
    • The European Parliament is the place for political parties to express their views. The treaties say it should be elected according to a Single Statute for the whole of Europe. Politicians refused. Voters have been diddled out of their voice for more than sixty years. The politicians should be defending the individual who is in need and not consciously or indirectly furthering blind party politics.

    20 October, 2014

    Circus6: OOPS! The EU slept through Einstein's 'Wake Up Call to Europeans'!

    All this year EU’s Commission’s headquarters Berlaymont building has been sporting a hypocritical reminder to all Europeans to remember the lessons of World War One. This year commemorates its centenary. The huge banner with WW1 soldiers and the poppies over their graves covers all 13 stories on the side wall of the Berlaymont facing the Robert Schuman Roundabout.
    Today’s peace-enhancing Europe rose out of the cauldron of war. Every generation since before Roman times knew war. Then lasting peace came to Europe based on the direct application of Judeo-Christian principles.  Why is it now under attack by jihadis?
    With all the millions of euros spent on the WW1 commemorations, why does the European Commission, the 'Guardian of the letter and spirit of the Treaties,' not want to inform citizens about the only proven peace process that ended millennia of perpetual wars?
    The Commission ignored their own banner message. They ignored the message of Einstein and others for which the Commission had been given full documentation. They ignored the commemoration that some small political parties in the European Parliament had given recognizing the Einstein-Nicolai Manifesto, a balm in Europe’s troubled and bloody history.
    The main characteristics of the European Community were first announced during and even before WW1. A hundred years ago this month, it took courage for Albert Einstein, renowned physicist of Relativity and the Quantum, and his colleagues to publish their historic Manifesto. They then delineated the main features of what became the EU’s founding entity: the European Community, initially only in the coal and steel sector. Coal was then the main energy source as OIL is today.  Steel was vital for the armaments industries.
    In mid-October 1914, Albert Einstein and his colleagues launched a powerful and sustained attack on self-serving global cartels. In his view and that of the co-signatories of the ‘Wake Up Call to Europeans,’ (Aufruf an die Europäer) global cartels were a major factor in the Arms Race before the world war. Patriots, citizens and consumers were exploited by both national and international cartels. Some examples:
    * A paper company, Harvey Steel, was formed where Germany's Krupp, France's Schneider, Britain's Armstrong, Vickers and USA's Bethlehem Steel and Carnegie Steel exchanged patents on steel armour and armour-piercing munitions to bolster trade and profits. Exploiting the gullibility of nationalistic politicians, they set one country against another. Krupp called it Schutz- and Trutzwaffen schaukeln, his defensive and offensive seesaw system to fire the Arms Race.
    *German industrialists like Krupp supplied arms to Germany’s future enemies, gained a French Legion d’Honneur and during the war exported basic metals to France via neutral countries.
    * British firms Vickers, Brown and Armstrong sold arms and mines to the Turks that slaughtered British and Anzac troops at Gallipoli.
    * ‘Industrial corporations formed and merged into vast international combines whose prosperity depended on exploiting the nationalist sentiments in different countries.’    The words are those of Henri de la Fontaine (Nobel Peace Prize, 1913). He went on to say: ‘the industries of iron, steel, copper and nickel, coal, petroleum and oils, chemical products (gas, explosives, gunpowder) and other materials as well as the manufacture of arms themselves form vast networks that encompass the entire planet.’ (The Bloody International of Armaments by Otto Lehmann-Russbüldt).
    Einstein and the future founder of the European Union, Robert Schuman, were among a small number of activists who not only saw the global dangers but proposed solutions to stop wars. The race was on to create an iron and steel cartel that would dominate the European Continent. Victory of either side was likely to create conditions for another world war. So it was. But not a third.
    By mid-October 1914 the German invasion of Belgium had made world war inevitable. What possible effect could Einstein’s voice have denouncing German and international cartels? Even then they manipulated much of the world economy.
    A few weeks earlier, 93 eminent university professors launched their ‘Appeal to the Civilized World’ maintaining that Germany was perfectly right in going to war to safeguard its culture. It denied any atrocities occurred in Belgium. Soon 4000 members of the German intelligentsia had signed this Appeal. That represented the quasi-totality of German professors in support for war.
    The ‘Wake-up Call to Europeans’ was quite different. The petition conceived by Einstein and Georg-Friedrich Nicolai (né Lewinstein, Berlin professor of physiology who had trained with Pavlov) was only signed by two others: Astronomy professor Wilhelm Foerster who headed Germany’s Standards Bureau, and Otto Buek, a philosopher of science. However the ‘Wake-up Call to Europeans’ was more far-sighted. Its aim was to ensure Europe would preserve its supranational values in a Community after the war. They already saw the main danger:  whoever won, the victor powers might sow the seeds for another world war for coming generations.
    Undeterred, the group started a larger organization based on what they called ‘supranational solidarity.’ It was to tackle the great cause of the world war. They called it the Union for New Patriotism (Bund Neues Vaterland, BNV). It drew support from intellectuals around Europe. It did not blame war on the shooting of an Austrian grand-duke in Serbia. Nor was their focus on an ‘accidental’ war brought about by military treaties.
    In June 1915 the BNV published a petition and sent it to the Reich Chancellor and all members of the German parliament, the Reichstag. It refuted Germany’s secret War Aims, by then known through the leaked Confidential Memo made by six national economic and industrial cartels. On 9 September 1914 Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg set these aims as:  the permanent dismantlement of fortresses in France and the cession of ‘the Briey basin whose iron ore was necessary for our heavy industry’. Luxembourg and Belgium were to become vassal States.
    The cartels also demanded the annexation of ‘the iron ore basin of Briey’ a small French town of 2500 population just across the frontier of German-occupied Lorraine. Why Briey?
    The Bund Neues Vaterland ‘opposed most energetically the demands of the petition and asked the Chancellor to take necessary measures against these manoeuvres so as to leave no doubt and to say clearly that the imperial Government does not approve the war aims that they have formulated. The annexation plans are motivated by the need to replenish supplies during a future war. An essential element to guarantee peace in future must be found in the development of international law. ‘
    New forms of law, ‘supranational’ law, also preoccupied the son of a French Lorraine soldier who in 1870 defended French Lorraine against ‘Prussians’ at the siege of Thionville. Robert Schuman was a student at Berlin Humboldt University in 1905-6. Half a century later in 1950 Schuman shocked the world when he announced the creation of a new form of grouping of States: the European Community of Coal and Steel. It was based on what he defined as ‘supranational law’. One key characteristic was that it provided the world’s first international system to control cartels.
    Schuman was born in Luxembourg where his father, Jean-Pierre, lived in self-imposed exile. He did not want to live under German occupation in Lorraine. Awarded most of the prizes in his final class at Luxembourg high school in 1903, Robert Schuman then made a surprising decision. He had the choice of universities across France, Switzerland and Belgium. Instead he crossed into occupied Loraine. At the Metz High School he crammed for the German university entrance certificate, the Abitur. He had to learn five years of some classes in just eight months. Why? His answer can be found in an later interview on Radio Luxembourg:
    It is not by chance that the idea of a Community of steel, iron and coal came to a Luxembourg boy whose parents have experienced what it is to have war.’ Thionville was called France’s Steel City. Luxembourg’s economy also depended on its own vibrant steel industry, trading inside the German customs union. The Schuman family house lay on the frontier, midway between Thionville and Luxembourg city, and only a few kilometres from the newly discovered rich, iron ore basin of Briey.
    In 1910 Robert Schuman received his doctorate of Law with high honours from German universities. The next year found him as deputy head of the German delegation to a conference in Leuven, Belgium, organized by Nobel Peace Laureate and Prime Minister Auguste Beernaert. Its theme?  International Peace through Law based on Christian principles.
    Before WW1, Schuman thus liaised between Francophone groups and German societies who were then less open to the concept of international law.
    What of the cartel problem before the outbreak of world war? In 1913 three-quarters of German iron ore came from Lorraine conquered in the 1871 Franco-Prussian war.  This rose to 80 percent during the war. ‘If iron ore production in Lorraine is interrupted,’ the cartels’ Memo warned, ‘the war to all practical purposes would be lost.’ France regained Lorraine after the war. Schuman became French deputy for Thionville. In the Second World War, Lorraine was again absorbed into Germany.
    Then Schuman, twice Prime Minister of France, and long-time Foreign Minister was able to bring in a profound political strategy of reconciliation. He created a supranational Community of Coal and Steel among democracies. The ‘Wake-up Call to Europeans’ of a century ago provided a core document for today’s European Union.
    Europeans are now living in the longest continual period of peace in more than two thousand years.  With incessant globalization, world population four times that of 1914, increased demand for strategic materials, and overt and covert cartels in strategic sectors including energy, democracies need to be forever vigilant.

    26 September, 2014

    Circus5: Scotland, Rise of Nationalism, Decline of Europe

    Freedom of choice is one of democracy‘s greatest gifts. When free people give their assent to Community structures, it is because they trust them. Trust grows as a product of positive moral and ethical experience of the Community Model, its Method and the leadership within it. Yet politicians are tempted to return to their old, dishonest techniques. Many still think that they can only defend their positions by manipulation of history, dishonest discourse and corrupt practice. Take the example of the present crisis of Europe caused by nationalist fervour across Europe’s ancient States. It is now straining the constitutions of the United Kingdom and Spain with bust-up.

    An unprecedented number of Scots and other residents of Scotland turned out for the referendum vote on Scottish independence on 18 September 2014. The 85 percent turn-out was the nation’s highest since 1951.

    What was the cause of this high passion and consummate interest in the unity of the United Kingdom? After all, Scotland has been tied to England for 300 years. Why does it now want separation?

    Has it anything to do with the European Union and the poor way it is being run?

    The evidence says Yes.

    The result is clear. Residents of Scotland rejected the call for Independence by 55 to 45 percent.There will be no independent Scotland. But internally the result is even more seismic for the United Kingdom of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. More than Scotland is now involved. The whole British constitutional arrangement will have to be re-cast.

    Following some late opinion polls when it seemed to the result could go either way, Westminster politicians made financial and political promises to get a No vote. Westminster government will ‘give’ the Scottish parliament Devo-Max, maximum decentralized powers. How generous of the Westminster representatives, the so-called servants of the public!

    Politicians made the case that if Scots voted No, then the central government in London would be provide even more money from British taxes. They would reinforce the Barnett Formula, named after its author. It dates back to the 1979 referendum on Scottish devolution. However then the Treasury minister Joel Barnett  doled out extra money only on a temporary basis. It has no legal or democratic basis. Barnett himself described the formula as ‘a terrible mistake.’ It does not relate to votes or real facts on the ground. Now Westminster politicians want to give away more money that does not belong to them! They have promised a bigger ‘donation’ from unwilling English taxpayers. The Welsh who do not receive such amounts are also upset.

    How did this politics of bribes and illegalities all come about? The political origin dates to the mid-1970s when James Callaghan’s Labour government lost its majority in the Westminster Parliament. To retain power it relied on the Scottish Nationalist Party and the Party of Wales (Plaid Cymru). In exchange for support, they demanded that their populations be treated more fairly by central government. They wanted their own parliaments. They wanted to preserve perhaps the oldest language in Europe and the 3000-year old source of many democratic principles of Common Law that Britons still treasure today.

    Before the illicit Lisbon Treaties — forced through against vocal and explicit public opinion — politicians had not tried such a power-grab that they could attain by distorting the European institutions to control every aspect of life with so little accountability.  Public trust did not matter when the treaties were agreed by party majorities — even though the parliamentarians had not even received a copy of the treaty. Even the European Parliament refused to publish the treaty before it had voted on it! The Lisbon process followed a decade of discontent with European politics.

    In comparison aspects of National and Regional misgovernance had not roused opinion to the levels of today. The Scots who voted in favour in the 1979 referendum failed to get their parliament then because the turnout was less than the 40 percent required. The Welsh failed to reach a majority. They had to wait for a second referendum in 1997. It led to a successful implementation of a Scottish and Welsh Parliament in 1999.

    In this period European politicians took on more powers but without proper accountability. Declining trust of decision-takers was also the very issue at the heart of British internal problems.

    Nationalist movements like the Scots are now becoming more vocal across the European Union. Why?

    The answer lies in another unprecedented event of 2014. That is the lowest electoral turnout in any European elections. Politicians have created a them-versus-us situation. The ‘us‘ is ‘We want none of the above mainstream parties on the voting paper.‘ A majority refused to vote at all. Despite some countries having compulsory voting the overall turnout was 42.5 percent. That is the lowest since voting was allowed on a restrictive basis in 1979. Then it was about two-thirds. It declined consistently every election to the present.
    1979  1984    1989   1994    1999     2004   2009   2014
    62      59        58          57       49        45       43        42.5      percent turnout


    In contrast when Member States have held referendums on EU matters the turnout has been much more impressive. It is nearly always above half the electorate. When the United Kingdom had a referendum on membership of the European Communities, 67 percent of the voters gave their assent with a turnout of 64 percent.

    When the politicians tried to monkey with the Community idea, the turnout remained high with the electorate roundly condemning malpractice. The referendum results were treated with contempt by politicians, who thought they had sewn up a new system called rule by the European Council in secret.

    For example when Denmark rejected the Maastricht Treaty it did so with a turnout of 83 percent. Politicians told them to vote again! When in 2005 France rejected the present Lisbon Treaty (then called the Constitutional Treaty) by 55 percent, it did so with a turnout of 69 percent. The Netherlands rejected this treaty by 62 percent with a turnout of 63 percent. The Nice Treaty was also considered a bad treaty when the Irish rejected it with a 54 percent majority but only 34 percent turnout. They were told to vote again and turn out in higher numbers or they would be kicked about by their biggers and betters.

    Thus the conclusion we can draw is that the public remains responsive and favourable to European unity but requires ethical and moral politics. Not tricks and fraud. The public refuse to ‘own’ something from the politicians that it knows is a lie. Nor can they. It does not depend on some false ‘social contract’ that in Europe’s history has led to autocracy and dictatorship. As Robert Schuman put it:
    The new Community politics is based on solidarity and the progress of trust. It constitutes an act of faith, not like that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in the goodness of humanity which has been so cruelly disproved over the centuries, but an act of faith in the good sense of the peoples who at last persuaded that their salvation resides in an agreement and cooperation so solidly organized between them that no government will be able to evade it. (Pour l’Europe, p46)
    The logic is inescapable. Europe’s politicians are doing things wrongly and possibly fraudulently. The public is telling them to get their crooked practice straight -- or else.

    An unacceptably low turnout is now the present normal. It may be headed lower for the next European elections. The politicians tried to jazz up the vote by trying another illegal procedure — creating ‘Lead candidates’ or SpitzenKandidaten‘. This supposed pizzazz was to hide European undemocracy. It was the theme of Commission President Barroso’s speech at Berlin’s Humboldt University in May. It talks of three successive improved ‘versions’ of Europe as if every change in Europe, made by politicians, was like updating computer software!

    Too many politicians suffer from the character defect that without them the world would stop. They are confused by egocentric ambition and less by the humility that characterized people like Schuman who said it was always wrong to tell a lie, even in politics. Inevitably lies lead to confusion and error.

    The creation of the European Community in 1952 was based on solid moral and ethical principles. It was not ‘Europe 1.0′ subject to political change of morals and ethics in their own versions. Later autocrats like de Gaulle or even parliamentary democrats milked billions from European tax-payers to stump up for bribes and votes. This corruption led to Beef Mountains, Wine Lakes and useless regional infrastructure projects. These politicians did not make their Europe 2.0 of ‘Open markets and an open society’. They were already in the framework of the Community Method. The first open market came on 10 February 1953. The ‘open society’ preceded it. It was formalized in the Council of Europe’s Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of November 1950. It recognized citizens’ ancient rights to free speech to criticize any politician, any religion, any association and any State.

    These original elements of the Community provided the ‘miracle of our times’ — the means to stop war among European States and create the bases for joint prosperity. The politicians’ concept of adding to this miracle by ‘reforming’ (corrupting) its fundamental Community form is ridiculous. It is as effective as trying to make a high speed train go faster by hitching some old, lame political camels to the front. The Community made a qualitative change that showed the politics of the past, the ‘stuff of politics‘ as usual is actually ‘stuff and nonsense‘. Party political cartels have always in the past led to war. Political nepotism as a governance system is only fit for the rubbish heap.

    Mr Barroso’s third phase, Europe 3.0, dealing with the ‘fallout of the economic and financial crisis’ and gaining ‘power and influence to sustain Europe’s future’ shows that politicians have really lost the plot. Not all the past so-called ‘reforms’ to the Community method are positive. Some are outright errors, deceptions and foolishness. Politicians have yet to denounce these mistakes, made by politicians, for politicians, to the detriment of the general public and common well being. The flagrant abuse contained in the Lisbon Treaty is a case in point.

    For more than sixty years have refused to follow the treaties they signed up to. Politicians aimed to:
    Mr Barroso’s main plea was for the introduction of a measure that is completely illegal according to even the Lisbon Treaties. That is the idea of SpitzenKandidaten and with it the total exclusion of normal citizens from any post of importance inside the Commission and every other institution. Political control by main parties to the exclusion of others and every normal non-party political citizen curtails free speech and democracy, fairness and justice. It cannot succeed.

    How can we be sure that the politicization of all Community institutions is totally contrary to real Community principles? Does President Barroso’s ‘emotion of being at the university of ‘Hegel, of Max Planck, of Albert Einstein‘ constitute any real political analysis of their contributions. Hegelian analysis contributed to both Marxism and Fascism, while the eminent physicist of the Quantum, Max Planck (who resigned his post in 1937 as a protest against Nazism) showed moral fortitude and a defence of supranational principles in science and in  public life. He resisted Nazi attempts to expel Jewish scientists and opposed the Nazi ideology that there was such a thing as Jewish science. There is only one science and it represents, like absolute Justice, supranational values.

    As for Robert Schuman’s work at Berlin and his attendance at Humboldt University in 1905-6, not a word! Not a word of his work for Germany to prevent World War One. In 1912 he was deputy head of the German delegation at a conference supported by Nobel laureates on international law according to Christian principles. Not a word about the concept of supranationality which is the foundational principle of the Community, nor about the Great Charter of the Community defining this that the Commission and the Council has refused to re-publish for more than SIXTY years.

    In this centenary year of the outbreak of World War One, the European public would have hoped Mr Barroso would have spoken of the contribution of Einstein throughout his life to build a supranational Europe. Together with Otto Buek and Berlin physiology professor Georg-Friedrich Nicolai and astronomy professor Wilhelm Julius Foerster, Einstein launched a ‘Call Up to Europeans‘ in October 1914 (Aufruf an die Europäer). It drew support from intellectuals and the public from around Europe. It called for supranational principles to be the core for treating the very sinews of war: the cartel control of the coal, iron and steel industries and the international armaments cartels that fed the pre-WW1 arms race.

    The supranational Community solution provides all the elements to resolve the interrelation between regional, national and European interests. Unfortunately the politicians of today are more interested in dismantling what has been achieved since the Schuman Declaration of May 1950, the Great Charter of 18 April 1951 guaranteeing freedom of choice and public assent to European integration. They are thus aiming to destroy the very European democracy on which they depend for a livelihood.

    11 September, 2014

    Circus4: Byzantine Commission structure provides jobs for unemployed European politicians

    The Commission’s drive to reduce unemployment is working!

    Five former prime ministers and 19 former ministers have found jobs. They have high-paid employment as Commissioners in Jean-Claude Juncker‘s new Commission, announced on 10 September 2014. It is composed of a record-breaking number of politicians — twenty eight. It is 100 percent, wall-to-wall card-carrying politicians.

    Career politicians are happy. They are being paid from public taxes. There is not a normal person, a non-politician, in sight. Candidates from among Europe’s 500 million citizens have been side-lined. Many could fill the role better than politicians: leaders in industry, law, advocacy, human rights, non-governmental organizations, ombudsmen, scientists, engineers. All honest people are eliminated by government leaders. That action is against the clear right of all citizens to be candidates for the job:

    The Lisbon Treaty Article 10 TEU says:
    10 para 3. Every citizen shall have the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union. Decisions shall be taken as openly and as closely as possible to the citizen.
    Politicians want the Commission to be exclusively controlled by a dangerous party cartel. Cartels are dishonest, illegal and led to WW1.

    The European Commission is political but it should not be party political, controlled by a party clique.The first President of the European Economic Community, Walter Hallstein said:
    In principle, we have no [political] competences … because there is nothing of that nature in the Rome Treaty. But we have political responsibility because we are a political – not an economic – enterprise. The Common Market has the goal of unifying Europe politically.
    Political parties, whether national or European, do not represent all of Europe. They are at best an important part but they do not encompass all interests of Europe. They cannot really be impartial honest broker. Parties are partisan, representing a vocal part of the population. The European Commission must address all issues of all citizens. It must also address important matters such as the need to stop party political corruption and the need for governments to obey European law.

    Hallstein was previously not a minister but an unelected civil servant in Adenauer’s government. He was chosen as president because, as formerly a professor of law and an ardent defender of democracy, he was better placed than others to lead in the struggle against egocentric politicians such as Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle wanted to destroy Europe’s last chance for peace in its supranational institutions because he wanted to dominate the Continent for himself.

    Hallstein called de Gaulle’s attempts to dismantle the peace progress achieved on the path to a supranational Europe “the greatest act of destruction in the history of Europe, even of the free world, since Hitler” (der größte Zerstörungsakt in der Geschichte Europas, ja der freien Welt, seit den Tagen Hitlers).

    Politicians have been trying to create a peace structure in Europe for a thousand years. They all failed until the idea of a supranational Community was initiated. Its principles, however, are often ignored or abused. Politicians, especially later ones, have shown by their incompetence that they do not know how to bring peace, either in Yugoslavia, North Africa, Syria or in many other areas of the world. European politicians meddle ignorantly with the primary mechanism of an impartial Commission at their peril. It endangers all European citizens.

    By the Treaty Law, the European Commission should have a small, limited number of experienced people who have no further outside ties or interests. They should seek European common interest. Instead the politicians have refused to follow this. They have been trying to foist two major changes on the public:
    The upshot of these illegal moves is that politicians have excluded all well-qualified European citizens who could be considered Commissioners.This nepotism of a party clique would be serious matter of corruption in a town or commune. It is major corruption for the European Union which controls the strings of a 14 trillion euro economy ($18.5 trillion).

    Who benefits? The political parties of the three major ‘families’ the ‘European People’s Party’ (George Orwell is spinning in his grave!), Socialists and Liberals. All other parties are excluded except for one. That is the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom. Apparently the British are keen to ‘renegotiate’ except when it comes to ‘jobs for the boys’.

    The illegal innovations contradict both the letter and the spirit of the treaties. Why? National representation assumes that the person is not impartial. How should it be done? The most obvious way is to have an impartial jury and let the public nominate those they consider fair-minded and independent Europeans.

    It would be more honest if government leaders nominated someone who was not a national of theirs and considered by all Europeans as impartial. Secondly those they nominate are obviously not impartial because they are friends and colleagues of the government leaders — who have many critics. They are also of the same political party. Having card-carrying party members proves they are not chosen according to the Treaty criteria. A party politician is partisan — the very opposite of impartial and independent.

    European elections show voter turn-out at an all time low in spite of some countries having compulsory voting. Public opinion is more and more alienated from the European institutions.

    The European Commission was set up and seen as the honest broker for diverse European interests. No more. The public has seen politicians fiddle the books on the euro. They have fiddled the statistics. Major countries like France and Germany have refused to follow the judgements of the European Court.

    The politicians’ solution? Make the European Council the arbiter of ‘fiddling’! Change the European Commission that took them to Court — which once had no party politicians– to become exclusively the home of retired or unwanted politicians or those coveting an income boost.

    What will be the outcome? Firstly more politicians means more political scandals and infighting. Secondly a continued amount of public distrust both of the politicians and unfortunately for the European institutions.

    27 August, 2014

    Euro12: European Council defies Ombudsman over rigging of EU's Fiscal Pact

    The European Ombudsman has strongly condemned the European Council for unscrupulously rigging the Irish referendum and parliamentary votes around the EU on the Fiscal Compact that controls the European economy. By withholding crucial documents, the European Council has deceived both the public and parliaments in Member States who passed the Pact as law. The Fiscal Compact is in reality an undemocratic Con-Trick. It violates basic principles of national and European democracy and law.
    • How can parliaments judge whether the Pact is fair, if the European Council hides the facts?
    • How can a referendum decide, if the European Council rigs the evidence?
    • How can the public interrogate their parliamentary representatives if the flawed legal basis for taxation and expenditure is locked away in the Council’s safe?
    • Can European institutions such as the Community’s civil service be exploited as a skivvy for the politicians’ own non-Community Pact?
    • The euro violates rules for a Community monetary system. Dishonest book-keeping and fraud reduced the Euro’s real value by 75 percent. Politicians refused to follow the Founding Fathers’ supranational economic and monetary principles.
    The Pact makes Council the supervisor of fraud! After the Ombudsman condemned the European Council’s maladministration, the same document was requested AGAIN. The European Council again defied the Ombudsman. It refused to provide the document. A further appeal was made to the Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, that the European Council should respect her judgements and basic democratic principles.  The Ombudsman metaphorically threw up her hands. She confessed that the Ombudsman could do nothing to make the European Council follow the rules except the European Court of Justice.

    She replied to me on 26 August 2014 that
    ‘I believe that a new inquiry into the Council’s recent refusal of disclosure would be repetitive, since there is no new element that would distinguish the new case of the one which I already inquired into. Moreover, the follow-up mentioned above (where the European Council again reiterated its own position) shows that the Council has no intention to change its position in this regard. It follows that a new inquiry into the same matters would, in all likelihood, lead to a new critical remark, which would neither be helpful to you, nor would trigger any positive follow-up from the Council.’
    What is this crucial document? The European Council produced an analysis on the Pact’s flaws in terms of EU law. For European citizens it covered whether within the Pact they could take the Council and Commission to Court for abuse and criminality associated with it. That is a fundamental democratic right of all citizens. This key analysis is vital for understanding the basis on which the European Council is attempting to control the lives of 500 million citizens and multiple trillions of euros.

    The document analyzing the insecure legal basis of the Fiscal Pact was circulated secretively to some EU delegations. It was never rendered public, in spite of national parliamentary debates and a referendum. Yet it is crucial for Europeans to protect the nascent European democracy that has been so abused by the European Council fraud in the past.

    In this Pact the European Council gave itself unprecedented powers over national budgets and imposed controls and reviews on government spending. The measures were forced through national Parliaments. Some national leaders refused to sign up to the Fiscal Pact. Thus the Pact cannot be regarded as EU or Community law. At best it is an international agreement masquerading as European law. Obfuscation.

    The Fiscal Pact measures are so radical and further distort the Community method for European democracy that referendums in all Member States should have been mandatory. Only one country, however, was able to force a referendum about this measure. That was Ireland. Its constitution requires such matters with major democratic consequences be subject to a vote. Other Member States railroaded the measure through their parliamentary system. A bare majority sufficed. There was minimal or no public debate about it. In Cyprus, which was hit by a euro banking disaster that shook the rickety foundations of the euro, it was passed simply by governmental Decree thus bypassing parliament.

    The European Council’s imposition of the Fiscal Compact bypassed all the usual democratic control of the European system such as the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee and proper public debate. The European Council has consistently blocked the legally required elections for these bodies. In this case they just ignored them.

    Are the Pact’s measures legal? Have Europeans lost their democratic rights? The Court has yet to pronounce.

    Robert Schuman, the initiator of the European Community, defined democracy by the goals the European peoples define for themselves, not politicians. He said that all measures must be ‘in the service of Europeans and acting in agreement with the European peoples.‘ In this Pact, the people were left out of the loop in one of the most important measures in recent European history.

    A key issue of this Pact is whether Europeans will be able to take legal action against politicians’ abuse or criminality spawned by these ‘closed door’ measures. Were the people consulted? No. Did they call for it? No. Did they agree? Hardly.

    The European Council is acting to prevent democratic control of its new powers. Specifically it has thumbed its nose at the Ombudsman in refusing to release documents of primary interest. It did the same to the citizen who pay their salaries and the cost of the legal document in question.

    Who are these people who are refusing democratic control over taxpayers money?

    The Fiscal Compact was brought in because of corruption of politicians who not only overspent their countries’ budget, but used national budgets in voter bribes to sections of the public while giving ‘tax breaks’ to party supporters. Then they cooked the books. The national statistics were bent, twisted and contorted to cover the fraudulent activity.

    If this had happened in a commercial company the perpetrators would now be in prison.

    But they are politicians. Now they have a Pact that puts them in the judge’s seat.