German voters deliver shattering defeat to Merkel

In an event, likely to be of huge significance for the whole of the EU, Germany's Green Party appears, this morning, to have won control of the wealthy German State of Baden-Wuerttemberg, a wealthy region along Germany's border with France and Switzerland, which has been under the control of the Christian Democrats since 1953. Read the Wall Street Journal report from here.

A video, highlighting the immaturity of the voters who have delivered this further disaster to European democracy, may be viewed here:

Can the EU impose a Bail Out on Portugal?

Any individual believing in national sef-determination and democracy must answer NO to the question in this postings headline.

Anybody wishing for the continuation of the EU in its present form is compelled to answer YES!

That, in a nutshell, is why the EU has become a tyranny! The terms of the EFSF require that the government of a Euro Group country wishing for money from the EFSF requests the funding assistance. Rather than do that, the Government of Portugal resigned, and under its constitution a new government apparently cannot be voted in and formed in less than two months. The President has limited powers so it appears a likely outcome will be a default when funds due to foreign banks next fall due, or that outside governments (presumably the home countries of such foreign banks) make the payments on Portugals behalf to avoid default. This would be outside the EFSF and the IMF and would be an acceptance of default in all but name!

The following paragraphs from a report in the Sunday Telegraph this morning, linked here, seem to sum things up very neatly:

Nobody in the country wants the EU-IMF intervention, but it now seems certain to be imposed, just as with Ireland last year, to protect the euro – not to mention the economies of France and Germany– from the contagion of the financial crisis.

“Portugal doesn’t need any help,” Mr Sócrates pleaded with other European leaders at an EU summit in Brussels on Friday.

“I know what it would mean. I know what it meant for the Greeks and the Irish and I don’t want that for my country.”

Even the centre-Right opposition Social Democratic party that torpedoed the socialist government opposes the terms of a bailout, which is expected to bring even tighter austerity policies and lower living standards for years.

Popular anger at measures aimed at averting a bailout has sent Portugal into an economic tailspin.

ECB has 130 billion exposure to Ireland's banks.

A good report on the present status of Ireland's subjugation is here, from which comes this: 

The ECB is worried they can lose the money they have given to the banks — that would be a nightmare," said a source close to the negotiations. The ECB has lent €130bn to the banks, a quarter of its book, while AIB admitted it lost €13bn in deposits this year and Bank of Ireland €10bn.

 The article claims Ireland has retained the right to continue with its12.5 % corporation tax rate, for how long that will be the case remains to be seen! Note this ominous sentence emphasised by the blog editor in the paragraphs below:

An EU source said: "We have realised the corporation tax issue is a casus belli [incident of war] for the Irish. We had something similar with the Greeks who did not want to touch their military spend, among the highest in the EU, so it was not touched."

However, he added that while the rate, at 12.5% the second lowest in the EU, would stay, there were other ways to address the loopholes that anger Berlin in particular because they see companies using them to avoid paying tax in Germany.

How will an Irish bailout help Portugal or Spain?

It is a good question contained in this posting's headline "How will an Irish bailout help Portugal or Spain?"..... the answer of course is that it will not, nor of course is it intended that it would. The name of the game from now on is consolidation of the suppression of sovereignty of an entire continent.

Such conquests can never be achieved without pain if not downright widespread misery. For what is coming read the ECB proposals for its new Enforcement Agency from the pdf file, linked here, (especially page 7 onwards of the 14 in total).

The Tyranny Question that will not go away!

French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, was interviewed on the BBC Today programme this morning and repeatedly asked whether Ireland would be 'permitted' to retain its 12.5% Corporation Tax rate. She repeatedly refused to offer an answer. The interview may be heard from here.

The entire four and a half minute interview is worth listening to but the crucial portion on economic sovereignty comes at the three minute point. The 'shrewd' question that was refused to be answered was the following as paraphrased by the blog editor:

"But can you see the possibility of a bailout being agreed that did not include a change in Iraland's corporation tax rate?"

An apt Churchill quote for the disgraceful EU

"Civilisation means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the condition of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained."

It is a rare event for me to discover a quote from Winston Churchill which I have not already relished. Therefore I have no hesitation in posting this one here today as it is particularly apt for both the EU and the directionless Cameron/Clegg Coalition Government busy in daily compounding the destruction of our Parliamentary Democracy.

Read the entire article on apt quotations from Robert Fisk in The Independent this morning linked from here.

Why the Euro should break up.

In an item in this morning's Daily Telegraph the head of the huge bank HSBC, who has tellingly left the EU to live in Hong Kong, Michael Geoghegan, is quoted as asking the following

"Why should the Euro break-up, it was created to form a common trading platform across Europe,"

The journalist writing the report one Harry Wilson, described as Financial Services Correspondent and therefore, we must presume the newspaper itself, chooses to precede this quoted question with the following paragraph:

"One striking point of optimism in his speech was his belief that the Euro would survive and that break-up of the currency pact was unlikely as it was still useful for its members."

There is little doubt that for the head of a large international banking group that is part of a conspiracy that has brought the economy of the West to its knees and is now living in comfortable tax exile in Hong Kong there is little doubt that the euro currency is still seen as useful.

To the ordinary citizens of Europe, however, who can daily now witness the fact that the euro currency was created for no other purpose than to consolidate the destruction of their democratic rights to periodically change their rulers without bloodshed, the "democracy" cited as the opposite of tyranny as defined by Karl Popper, the continuation of the euro is the one step that will guarantee that the Continent of Europe will be almost certainly doomed to return to the darkest days of the nineteen thirties.

In this context, is it not incredible that a newspaper such as the Daily Telegraph can describe as a "striking note of optimism" the very notion of survival for the currency which the Nation State which is home to the Telegraph group has always shunned for reasons of Sovereignty and the absence of democratic legitimacy and accountability.

International Bankers may well welcome a centrally controlled EU with a cowed and subservient population of some 350 million to exploit, none of whom will have any say as to how they are governed nor right to elect their leaders. Survival of the euro currency now clearly makes such an outcome an imperative for the EU, as argued by President Sarkozy of France and the three EU Presidents in justifying the necessity for "Economic Government". Without "Total" therefore "totalitarian" control of all the 27 economies of the member states (the Lisbon Treaty requires that all must eventually join the euro) the disparity between the countries inevitably suggests that the common currency will fall apart. Therefore to survive, totalitarianism is required, ( e.g. we must all have the same retirement age, working hours, wage rates, health rights etc., as decreed from Brussels) that is what is meant by "Economic Government"and any suggestion otherwise is a confidence trick, very much in line with the manner in which the EU has 'advanced?' up to this point.

I would have hoped that a newspaper based in Britain, the nation that 70 years ago stood alone during the Battle of Britain to fight the dictatorships of Hitler and Mussolini, would have today been capable of recognising a putative tyranny approaching its adolescence.

Imagine the controls necessary to achieve the euro's survival and weigh them against the well known consequences of the short term pains of sovereign default. Only bankers with huge sums at stake could possibly choose the former.

Wake up Telegraph readers, I only regret that I am blacklisted from comments to that newspaper for earlier remarks, such that this plea cannot be made as a comment to the online article itself!

(Later update - I have made an intended positive suggestion as to how the Coalition Government in the UK could proceed on helping to resolve this crucially important issue on another blog, linked here.)

If Greece or Spain were California!

The long forecast euro-wreck has arrived, the jagged rocks surround. As I blogged last week, if the Eurozone or the EU mount a rescue for Greece then the end result will be tyranny in Europe.

AFP reports that Juncker declared Borg's call for greater IMF surveillance and monitoring of Greece to be an "absurd" irrelevance "fuelled by Anglo-Saxon voices" seen as hostile to the shared currency. "If California had a refinancing problem, the United States wouldn't go to the IMF," Juncker said.

The response to this smug, self-satisfied tripe from the federalist Luxembourger who has always been at the forefront of further EU federalization, is contained in an Op-ed in the IHT by Paul Krugman, linked here, from which I quote:

Now, if Spain were an American state rather than a European country, things wouldn’t be so bad. For one thing, costs and prices wouldn’t have gotten so far out of line: Florida, which among other things was freely able to attract workers from other states and keep labor costs down, never experienced anything like Spain’s relative inflation. For another, Spain would be receiving a lot of automatic support in the crisis: Florida’s housing boom has gone bust, but Washington keeps sending the Social Security and Medicare checks.

But Spain isn’t an American state, and as a result it’s in deep trouble. Greece, of course, is in even deeper trouble, because the Greeks, unlike the Spaniards, actually were fiscally irresponsible. Greece, however, has a small economy, whose troubles matter mainly because they’re spilling over to much bigger economies, like Spain’s. So the inflexibility of the euro, not deficit spending, lies at the heart of the crisis.

None of this should come as a big surprise. Long before the euro came into being, economists warned that Europe wasn’t ready for a single currency. But these warnings were ignored, and the crisis came.

Our corrupt MPs created even more corrupt MEPs

The facts from The Times, linked here, this morning on the massive payouts to retiring MEPs more than fully explains why this blog repeatedly argued that in this depression Thursday's European Elections should have been canceled. For back-up justification read here and here.

My blood boils when I hear radio adverts for these elections, paid for by taxpayers, to send corrupt people to feed off the taxpayers in a dual-seated parliament which has no power to legislate nor to hold the real powers in the EU to account.

As I posted yesterday nearly all our MPs are corrupt proven by their having conspired in this huge transfer of power. When the people of the EU put an end to the EU Gravy train which they eventually must surely do, let us ensure Westminster has been purged and cleansed so that the occupants have the trust of the electors to re-take the reins of power - that must surely mean that almost no presently sitting member can be re-elected!

Victory in Europe Day - What Victory?

In parts of Europe today a holiday marks the final defeat of the totalitarian Nazis on this same day in 1945. Note I say marks, rather than celebrates, for in truth that victory today appears more than hollow.

I personally mark my 65th Birthday this year, ten months of humanity advancing and some 64 years of decline and return to servitude! A sad thing at this point of one's life to realise that civilisation appears to have reached its apogee, when one was less than one year old.

The European Parliament has now broken up, for its corrupt membership to campaign for re-election across almost the entire European Continent, one member not standing described it during its last session as follows:

"Over the last five years I have watched in horror the EU’s endless, scandalous, institutionalised looting of taxpayers’ money.

"I have watched in horror an already overcrowded UK deluged by hundreds of thousands of uninvited foreign workers who arrived for their benefit and to claim our welfare.

"I have watched in close-up a legislative system which permits anonymous bureaucrats to generate so-called law without any regard for the damage they do to the British economy and businesses.

"I have watched in close-up this expensive, ineffectual talking shop of a parliament masquerading as an elaborate illusion of accountable democracy – a monstrous deceit on the electors who sent us here.

"President Gorbachev was right. The EU is the old Soviet Union dressed in western clothes.

"One day you will realise you cannot be masters in someone else's house."

Jean Monnet one of the prime movers behind the EU project is not celebrated in Cognac, France, the town of his birth, the house where he lived is unmarked and the tourist office reluctant to point the way.

Rightly so, for this monstrous project based on the accumulation of power by stealth and the destruction of all democratic institutions always had its roots in totalitarianism and all those ancient horrors we thought we had defeated once and for all in 1945.

Monnet accepted the project could not advance with the people's consent, we can now look at his creation and fully understand how that could be!

Buy the book Liberal Fascism, by Jonah Goldberg, published by Penguin ISBN 978-0-141-03950-3 to understand how totalitarianism has its roots from the left of the political spectrum and begin to come to understand how we have once again come to this pass.

Next month deny your vote to any who support the continuation of this disgusting and disgraceful EU project on its present terms and have sought to impose the Lisbon Treaty against the clearly expressed wishes of the electorates in France, The Netherlands and Ireland!

Treasures from the Threads - Number Thirty-four

A Leading Article in The Independent, linked here, offering little of value and erroneously describing the BNP as "far right' rather than "far left" as is really the case, gathers this well-considered response:

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Justice and security agenda in Europe is very dangerous

old_green wrote:

Monday, 4 May 2009 at 11:28 pm (UTC)

Paradoxically, Europe is not a democracy, even though it is composed of democracies and holds elections.
Decisions are made out of sight, which is the majority of the problem - there is absolutely no accountability.
Votes at the Council of Ministers are taken in secret - we cannot know if our nation has voted for or against a measure. Our ministers can claim they opposed something when the truth may be exactly the opposite - they may have pushed for its adoption.

The UK has been spearheading a very negative justice and security agenda in Europe, including privacy-invading technology. This has all been happening largely out-of-sight.

Do you think perhaps this is why UK politicians are so keen that Europe isn't discussed seriously here in Britain?

Let's take a look at some of the issues: -
* A new five year plan for justice and home affairs that emphasises the surveillance state and keeping digital records of all citizens' activities
http://www.statewatch.org/analyses/the-shape-of-things-to-come.pdf
* Plans for database registration of all citizens and universal biometric ID cards, with RFID
* The EU directive (2006/24/EC) on 'data retention', creating a database recording all communications, phone calls and emails (incidentally, approved by the European Parliament)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/feb/11/eu-liberty-central
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2002/jun/06/onlinesupplement.privacy
* Introducing databases tracking political activists even before 9/11.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/sep/10/privacy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/may/30/immigration.footballviolence
* The willingness of the EU to compromise to the US on privacy, shown in the release of airline passenger data to USA, with inadequate privacy protection.
* Plans to fingerprint all children, compulsorily over the age of 12
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/jul/30/politics.humanrights
* An EU initiative to continuously track the speed and position of vehicles, about to go on trial in the UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/31/surveillance-transport-communication-box
* An EU directive on road pricing which will require tracking and identification of all vehicles in Europe
Directive 2004/52/EC
https://www.privacyos.eu/wiki/index.php/Electronic_road_pricing_and_privacy
* An EU-funded pilot scheme in Romania to put RFID into all government documents
* Apparent backing for the RFID (Radio-Frequency ID chips) tracking system in goods and stores, which would allow tracking and profiling of all individuals

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Obama in Strasbourg - a blind eye to putative tyranny

The speech by President Obama to an audience consisting mainly of students and dubbed as 'town hall style' with time for questions at the end was in most parts a brilliant demonstration of the new President's grasp of detail and oratorical gifts. If you missed it try and find an online version to watch on video, a link to the Washington Post gives the written version from here.

Many might consider these two paragraphs as the grist of the message for Europe when he actually spoke of the Nato Alliance which celebrates its 60th anniversary today:

In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.

But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what's bad.

There could, however, be another passage which might be remembered by history as of far greater significance and it is this:

We take for granted the peace of a Europe that's united, but for centuries Strasbourg has been attacked and occupied and claimed by the warring nations of this continent. Now, today in this city, the presence of the European Parliament and the Council of Europe stand as symbols of a Europe that is united, peaceful and free. (Applause.)

It is one thing for the military minds in the Pentagon to allow strategic and military considerations to override the realities of democratic legitimacy as I discussed on this blog yesterday, linked here, but it is quite another for a recently elected new President of the USA and himself the head of a party bearing the proud name "Democrats", especially one so well-informed on a multitude of details about the world and its present parlous state, to turn a blind eye to the potentially tyrannical structure of the Strasbourg Parliament that he here extolled!

The oft repeated claim that the EU brought peace to Europe is a blatant lie. The forerunners to the EU were merely discussing wine lakes and butter mountains while the real work was undertaken elsewhere.

The USA has of necessity always been somewhat selective in picking allies with regimes lacking the basics of democracy, particularly in the second half of the last century in South America. It is distressing, to say the least, to find a new President, celebrating the 60 birthday of the organisation that truly has brought peace to the world, turn his back on the democratic aspirations of some half a billion Europeans! We must hope common sense prevails and that in the coming days, hopefully this weekend in Prague, President Obama will acknowledge the democratic deficit that increases each day within the EU and not turn a blind eye as was done in the 1930s with such horrific costs!