Continental Dream; British Nightmare; Warning to America

[BTS]

Eagle Forum...

By Phyllis Schlafly

The European ruling elite is having a collective nervous breakdown for fear the French will vote "No" on May 29, and reject the European Constitution. Eleven opinion polls indicate it is likely that democracy may upset the power-seeking politicians' undemocratic plans.

The politicians and bureaucrats who dream of world government, or at least continental government, to be run by a commission of technocrats who think they are wiser than ordinary people, have progressed a long way toward their goal, starting with the Common Market, and then morphing it into the current European Union (EU). The sovereignty and self-government of nation-states were bypassed in a series of very undemocratic, deceptive maneuvers, and the new EU Constitution is expected to lock the system into place.

Some leaders in the British Conservative Party are trying to alert their countrymen to the folly of what Britain has already accepted by joining the EU. The British have given up their basic right to elect, and dismiss those who make their laws, principles for which millions of Englishmen have fought, and many have given their lives.

And, to whom did the British give these hard-won rights of a free people? To the bureaucrats whom Margaret Thatcher labeled the paper-pushers in Brussels.

The EU Council of Ministers in Brussels now has effective control of all areas of commerce, industry, social and labor policy, the environment, agriculture, fish, and foreign trade. Since Britain has only 11-1/2 percent of the votes, and it takes 30 percent to block a new law, the British Parliament must obey the Brussels bureaucrats, or face unlimited fines imposed by the Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

The Luxembourg Court is not a court of law as we understand it. It is an agency of EU bureaucrats, who are free to indulge in imaginative judicial activism to implement "the ever-closer union of the peoples of Europe."

The British government admits that over half of its major laws, and 80 percent of all its laws, now originate in Brussels. No law passed in Brussels has ever been successfully overturned by Parliament.

The EU makes laws in the labyrinths of the unelected bureaucracy. The Commission has the monopoly to propose all new laws, which are then negotiated in secret by the shadowy Committee of Permanent Representatives, and the Council of Ministers makes the final decisions by secret vote.

The parliaments of the member states are excluded from the process, except to rubber-stamp EU decisions after they are made, and national parliaments are not allowed to know how their country's representatives voted in Brussels. Ask yourself: Wouldn't you think we had lost our right of self-government if Congress took its votes in secret, and we couldn't find out how our representatives voted?

In the EU's adaptation of the now-discredited Brezhnev doctrine (once a country is taken over by the Soviets, it can never escape from Communism), once an area of national law or life has been ceded to Brussels, it can never be returned to national parliaments.

The new EU Constitution to be voted on is described as tidying up the current EU status. That means it will take away what bits of sovereignty still remain in the member nations.

President Bush is trying to spread democracy in unlikely places around the world, but democracy is fast being taken away from our traditional friends in Europe. The EU was formed undemocratically, by the elites of the several nations, without the informed consent of the people, and its entire structure is institutionally undemocratic.

The EU is a top-down enforced togetherness of different nationalities, with different cultures and languages, many of whom don't like each other. That's a prescription for conflict, not peace.

If the new Constitution is adopted, the EU paper-pushers in Brussels, with their own flag and anthem, will assume full powers over foreign relations, international agreements, the armed forces and arms industries of the member nations, and criminal and civil justice law and procedure.

It is a mystery why any Americans would support the concept of the EU. Many, perhaps most, Europeans see the EU's main purpose as to stand up to and overtake the United States, as the world's superpower.

The European nations' loss of sovereignty to the EU should be a warning to Americans. The EU is a model for how global-governance advocates in the United States plan to morph trade agreements into continental government for the Western Hemisphere.

NAFTA came first, under which a foreign tribunal was able to override U.S. laws, and give Mexican trucks access to all our highways. Congress will soon vote on CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement), the plan to integrate our prosperous economy with the poverty of Central America.

Then will come FTAA (Free Trade Agreement of the Americas) which, according to the Quebec Declaration, signed by President Bush in 2001, will bring about economic and political "hemispheric integration." Americans who want to retain American sovereignty should speak up now.





Phyllis Schlafly is is the author of a reading system called Turbo Reader, and president of Eagle Forum.

[Philadelphia Eagle]

Very interesting article, BTS.
It seems that the Europeans are in a real mess.
How did they let it happen?
Can they reverse the momentum before it's too late?
It's almost as if some of these European states are sleep-walking to disaster.

[gmc]

posted by BTS

Very interesting article, BTS.
It seems that the Europeans are in a real mess.
How did they let it happen?
Can they reverse the momentum before it's too late?
It's almost as if some of these European states are sleep-walking to disaster.

Not like the United States then?

It's a load of bollocks, like anything else in politics there are problemsif you really think we can't control our governments you don't know much about european politics, neither does this writer.

The British have given up their basic right to elect, and dismiss those who make their laws, principles for which millions of Englishmen have fought, and many have given their lives

.

What's wrong with this sentence, give you a clue, United Kingdom of Great Britain.

If I were you I'd worry more about america.

[Bothwell]

We have NOT given up our right to make laws.
The EU for all it's faults (and there are many) has kept Europe peaceful for many years. Yes the legislation can be overeaching but the UK has benefitted greatly from it's membership of the EU. My guess is that the Franch will vote Non but so what the treaty does not have to be ratified and if it is not then we will carry on as we are.

You have to understand that the we have very close neighbours, in the time it would take you to fly from Ney York to LA you could reach every member of the EU, France is 20 minutes via the tunnel from the UK. Rome, Madrid, Berlin, Paris etc are all less than 2 hours flying time away. So we have the geographical proximity to cope with.

[TMC]

The European ruling elite is having a collective nervous breakdown for fear the French will vote "No" on May 29, and reject the European Constitution. Eleven opinion polls indicate it is likely that democracy may upset the power-seeking politicians' undemocratic plans.

The politicians and bureaucrats who dream of world government,

Drivel.

or at least continental government, to be run by a commission of technocrats who think they are wiser than ordinary people, have progressed a long way toward their goal, starting with the Common Market, and then morphing it into the current European Union (EU). The sovereignty and self-government of nation-states were bypassed in a series of very undemocratic, deceptive maneuvers, and the new EU Constitution is expected to lock the system into place.

Can you tell us what these deceptive manoeuvre’s were.

Some leaders in the British Conservative Party are trying to alert their countrymen to the folly of what Britain has already accepted by joining the EU. The British have given up their basic right to elect, and dismiss those who make their laws, principles for which millions of Englishmen have fought, and many have given their lives. And, to whom did the British give these hard-won rights of a free people? To the bureaucrats whom Margaret Thatcher labeled the paper-pushers in Brussels.

Some conservative’s are in favour of the EU.

The EU Council of Ministers in Brussels now has effective control of all areas of commerce, industry, social and labor policy, the environment, agriculture, fish, and foreign trade. Since Britain has only 11-1/2 percent of the votes, and it takes 30 percent to block a new law, the British Parliament must obey the Brussels bureaucrats, or face unlimited fines imposed by the Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

You are assuming that Britain would be alone in opposing any new law’s. If Britain wanted to oppose any new law’s, it would lobby other countries in order to get the required 30%, if it couldn’t get the required 30% it would fail and democracy would have been served.

The Luxembourg Court is not a court of law as we understand it. It is an agency of EU bureaucrats, who are free to indulge in imaginative judicial activism to implement "the ever-closer union of the peoples of Europe."

Can you provide instances where the court has acted, free to indulge in imaginative activism.

The European Court of Justice was established to ensure that the law’s and treaties of the EU are observed by all members.


The British government admits that over half of its major laws, and 80 percent of all its laws, now originate in Brussels. No law passed in Brussels has ever been successfully overturned by Parliament.

And.

The EU makes laws in the labyrinths of the unelected bureaucracy. The Commission has the monopoly to propose all new laws, which are then negotiated in secret by the shadowy Committee of Permanent Representatives, and the Council of Ministers makes the final decisions by secret vote. The parliaments of the member states are excluded from the process, except to rubber-stamp EU decisions after they are made, and national parliaments are not allowed to know how their country's representatives voted in Brussels. Ask yourself: Wouldn't you think we had lost our right of self-government if Congress took its votes in secret, and we couldn't find out how our representatives voted?

The European Parliament is sometimes referred to as a 'rubber-stamp' parliament, and indeed it was, twenty years ago or so, when it had the right only to be 'consulted' in some areas, and to say 'yes or no' in others. But today, nothing could be further from the truth. In the vast majority of legislative areas (to be expanded to all such areas in the proposed constitution), MEPs have equal legislative power with Council. The 'conciliation procedure', by which proposals are bounced from Council to Parliament and amended by both, is similar to the US Congress/Senate system. C&P

In the EU's adaptation of the now-discredited Brezhnev doctrine (once a country is taken over by the Soviets, it can never escape from Communism), once an area of national law or life has been ceded to Brussels, it can never be returned to national parliaments.

I assume that by making an analogy with the soviets, you think it will add weight to you’re argument.

The new EU Constitution to be voted on is described as tidying up the current EU status. That means it will take away what bits of sovereignty still remain in the member nations.

President Bush is trying to spread democracy in unlikely places around the world, but democracy is fast being taken away from our traditional friends in Europe. The EU was formed undemocratically, by the elites of the several nations, without the informed consent of the people, and its entire structure is institutionally undemocratic.

Tell me if I’ve got this wrong, the US president is the boss of the US executive, the US cabinet is solely appointed by the president, none of them are elected officials. The president's choice of cabinet then has to be ratified by Congress.

How is this different to the EU system?

The EU is a top-down enforced togetherness of different nationalities,

It is not an enforced togetherness, If Britain wanted to leave the EU it could, it would be messy but it could be done.

with different cultures and languages, many of whom don't like each other. That's a prescription for conflict, not peace.

The fact that the EU countries have come together with a common goal is a recipe for peace.

If the new Constitution is adopted, the EU paper-pushers in Brussels, with their own flag and anthem, will assume full powers over foreign relations, international agreements, the armed forces and arms industries of the member nations, and criminal and civil justice law and procedure.

Britain has a veto over tax, foreign policy and defence.

It is a mystery why any Americans would support the concept of the EU. Many, perhaps most, Europeans see the EU's main purpose as to stand up to and overtake the United States, as the world's superpower.

I don’t understand this logic, a strong a wealthy Europe is good for the US, as is, a strong and wealthy US good for Europe.

[gmc]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4538249.stm

A charge often made against the proposed EU constitution by its opponents in France is that it is an "Anglo-Saxon" document - a plot to enshrine Thatcherite policies which will devastate the social balance of European economies.

Melenchon, Jean-Luc
Law of the jungle: Jean-Luc Melenchon
As an example, they point to the phrase used in Article I-3 (2) which states that there shall be "an internal market where competition is free and undistorted".

The most eloquent complaint about Europe, particularly Germany, has come from the German novelist Guenter Grass. In a recent article in Die Zeit (reprinted in The Guardian) he illustrated the underlying malaise which has also led to such opposition to the constitutional project in France.

"We are all witnesses to the fact that production is being destroyed worldwide, that so-called hostile and friendly takeovers are destroying thousands of jobs, that the mere announcement of rationalisation measures, such as the dismissal of workers and employees, makes share prices rise and this is regarded unthinkingly as the price to be paid for 'living in freedom'," he wrote.

"Parliament is no longer sovereign in its decisions - [it] has thereby become an object of ridicule. It is degenerating into a subsidiary of the stock exchange. Democracy has become a pawn in the dictates of globally volatile capital.

"The social market economy - formerly a successful model of economic and cohesive action - has degenerated into the free-market economy."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4277903.stm

UK worry

Difficult to imagine, but not impossible. The UK, already outside the mainstream of European integration - the euro and the Schengen border-free zone - may be the last to hold a referendum.

If, as many think, it ends up rejecting the constitution, after all the other 24 EU members say 'Yes', Kirsty Hughes can only see one possible scenario.

"I think it's going to be very problematic. I haven't talked to anybody who thinks you can ask the British public to vote twice," she says.

"I think that would cause uproar in the British media. But that means you're going to face a very serious political crisis. You'll have a lot of people in the UK, maybe the Conservatives, saying legally we can stay in, legally they can't throw us out. But the political pressure will be to renegotiate, to have some sort of special partnership, for Britain to be like a big Norway.

"And that's going to be a big crisis in Britain as much as in Brussels."

The disadvantage of being like Norway is that a country would have to pay a hefty contribution and follow most of the EU's rules in order to keep up economic and trade links with the bloc, while not actually taking part in decision-making. Whether any of the EU members will want to go that far, is a question no one can answer now.

Anyone who thinks european countries will lose their national identity in a supranational european state really hasn't been paying attention. Clowns like the UK independence party aren't paying attention either.

Assume for the moment you are talking to an idiot..lol

what are the top 5 or 10 benefits to your individual countries and as a group that you see as a result of this joining.

have there been any major considerations overlooked until after the fact? Ya know, kinda like our amending the constitution to cover specific issues?

is the general concensus that this was a good thing?

Because to be honest with you, an article by Phyllis Schlafly doesn't do much for me.

[john8pies]

Personally, I do SO[u][i] hope that every European worth his salt will vote a resounding NO to the corrupt EU!

[TMC]

Assume for the moment you are talking to an idiot..lol

I usually do. (Joke)

what are the top 5 or 10 benefits to your individual countries and as a group that you see as a result of this joining.

It would be easy to make a list of the perceived benefits of EU membership, such as access to the worlds largest trading block, etc. However, europhobes would argue that we can have all these things and remain outside or on the fringes of the EU (wrongly imo), it’s a case of who you believe.

have there been any major considerations overlooked until after the fact? Ya know, kinda like our amending the constitution to cover specific issues?

Yes, this is what is being voted on now, the constitution is being amended to change the way the EU works now that it has 25 members.

is the general concensus that this was a good thing?

If there were a vote in the UK on the constitution tomorrow, the no vote would undoubtably win, this is because we haven’t had a proper debate on the EU in this country and the tabloids love to portray Britain standing alone against Johnny Foreigner. Perhaps now that our national election is out of the way we can have a proper debate without all the jingoism.

Because to be honest with you, an article by Phyllis Schlafly doesn't do much for me.

It’s always best to read anyone with a certain amount of cynicism.

[gmc]

posted by flopstock

Assume for the moment you are talking to an idiot..lol

what are the top 5 or 10 benefits to your individual countries and as a group that you see as a result of this joining.

have there been any major considerations overlooked until after the fact? Ya know, kinda like our amending the constitution to cover specific issues?

Britain kept out the eec in the early years because of this daft idea we still had an empire to depend on.

The EEC is a trading bloc, outside of it our goods were subject to tariffs that made them more expensive.
Once a member we were able to attract outside investment most notable japanese cars manufacturers but also high tech companies as well we had a cultural advantage over the europeans in terms of the language etc but unless we were inside the trade walls that would have counted for nothing.
The regional development fund benefited parts of the UK considerably, most notably scotland and wales, it's afairly safe bet that the Westminster government would not have invested. One of the tenets was that the better off countries help develop the poorer ones. I am surrounded by eec funded roads, industrial estates etc that have benefited the economy greatly at a time when most of the heavy industry was being wiped out by Maggie T. Most of the new countries joining are after the same kind of help and yes anti eec pundits make much of this forgetting that we have benefited as well in the past. There are now numerous sme's rather than a few big companies, survivability is much better.

There is a great deal wrong with the EEC , some of the pan european legislation is totally inappropriate for Britain, The common agricultural policy is a shambles bt british farmers have done well out of it as well.

Fishery policy is a nightmare and for an island nation our fishing industry had been almost wiped out. That is not the fault of the eec but the pillocks supposedly looking after our interests,

also things like employment legislation, the tories didn't sign up to the social contract legislation saying it would discourage investors, which might have been true. except if oit is the same in all countries it ceases to be a factor. Now if a multinational wants to cut back on their factories they shut the british ones first because it is cheaper, in france and germany redundancy payments etc are higher.

We now have human rights legislation and a european court to appeal to, this partiucularr government has been overruled a couple of times-derervedly so imo.

Most of our trade is with EEC countries, if you look at companies opposed to the EEC very few actually export.

The likelihood of national governments becoming completely subordinate to the eec is fairly remote.

Patterns of world trade are going to change in the future not being involved in the EEC would be a mistake, in business you are only as good as what you are doing now, past glories are just that past glories. If you are having to deal with supra national corporations being a small country on your own can be rather fraught.

I find american commentators on european politics quite interesting. They seem to view government as something that happens with little input from the people, maybe that's a reflection of US politics-I don't know. If the EEC constitution is not ratified the EEC will still go on, but the poliicians will have to do some persuasion to get support. There is little real discussion about it with things like UKIP making the running.