Are You Furious and Paddling Yet?
by Phillip Day
A recent Eblast sent out from the Campaign for Truth in Europe shocked many. It asked the reader whether they were aware of key facts about the European Union. The bulletin solicited overwhelming support from around the world, and also a few missiles, not the least of which arrived, laser-guided, in the form of Tory Member of the European Parliament Roger Helmer, who called one detail in my bulletin 'crap'.
One lady who works for the EU in Luxembourg wanted to know where I picked up this piece of 'baloney'. Another subscriber wanted to draw my attention to how much more moral the EU is than America. Yet another was delighted that 'pimp' Britain, the 'poodle of America', could possibly leave the European Union. After all, who needs Britain?
Oh, don't get me started.
In the great Information Age today, do we all have a problem identifying what is fact and what isn't? I am always boggled by the extent to which a human being will canoe down that long river in Egypt called De-Nial, and walk away from the truth.
So let's get to specifics. Below in bold are the questions my bulletin asked of the reader followed by the proof. Perhaps after we have buried our political indignations over fact or fiction, we could set about deciding as a continent whether we want to remain individual, self-governing nations, or become part of the unsavoury and highly dangerous EU alternative. I believe in Britain we're at that crossroads now - Peter Hitchens' last unrepeatable moment at which we can halt our extinction as a culture and a nation.
There are those who think European integration is a great idea. And you know what? I defend their right to the death to have their own view. In the end, if the British people allow full integration with the EU to occur, folks like myself, who don't like it, always have the option to go and live somewhere else, and we yet might. Joining the euro - the final irrevocable step to integration - if decided by referendum, may just be the last democratic decision this country takes as a nation - even supposing we get the chance to vote, which is somewhat in doubt at the present time.
But here's my main beef: and it's good old British beef. If full integration into the EU is such a great idea for Britain, then why all the lies and secrecy? Why is everyone sneaking around in the bushes and not coming clean about the true end-game? Why not just come right out with it, like a few proud Euro-politicians have done, and have Trevor McDonald announce to the nation that the euro means the end of our sovereignty and independence as a country, a rejection of American influence in Europe, and us tossing our marbles into the pot along with all those continental cousins of ours.
I don't know what the big deal is - I really don't. Tell us all it'll mean the sharing of all our jobs, the free movement of labour for anyone who wants to come and work in Britain, along with the dividing up of our wealth, and national assets, such as our $500 billion future oil reserves, with our neighbours. Just be honest and tell the truth.
But please, use Trevor McDonald to do it. I can take
any kind of bad news from him.
Of course, there's a short answer to why British pro-Europeans won't come
clean. Because they're worried that if they did come out and attempt to
sell the real EU dog-and-pony show to the British people, many would understandably
recoil in horror. Tony Blair would doubtless wake up with a horse's head
in his bed the following morning. There'd be heads on spikes up Whitehall
outside Wimpy's. And here's why:
Did you know that the European Union, soon to dwarf the USA with a
population of 450 million after May 2004, has a constitution planned for
this summer that, once signed, will end its member states' ability ever
to leave, short of war?
Draft constitution CONV 528/03, promoted by ex-French premier Valery Giscard
D'Estaing, lays out the plan, in which the Union achieves 'legal personality'
(Article 4) and permanent, legal 'primacy' and 'competence' (Title III)
over the member states. No exit from the EU constitution by member states
is legally provided for in any draft document so far issued, and is unlikely
to exist in the final version. Previously, Articles 2 and 3 of the Amsterdam
Treaty show that a single superstate is the ultimate goal of the European
Union. Articles 98 and 99 of the same Treaty underpin moves to compel
member states into the single currency, whether they want to join or not.
Brussels correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, Ambrose Evans Pritchard, reported on 7th February 2003:
"Article 3 [of the proposed EU Constitution] gives the EU powers to 'co-ordinate the economic policies of the member states', which covers fiscal policy. Article 4 says 'the Union shall have competence to define and implement a common foreign and security policy, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy'.
Virtually all the current activities of the British Government will fall under the 'exclusive' or 'shared competence' of the EU - meaning that Westminster will be prohibited from legislating unless Brussels chooses to waive its primacy.
The areas cover public health, social policy, transport, justice, agriculture, fisheries, energy, economic and social cohesion, the environment, internal and external trade, and consumer protection."
Tim Kirkhope, a Conservative MEP and justice spokesman, has no problem accusing the EU of flirting with 'dictatorship': "This [constitution] puts our parliamentary democracy under grave threat. It turns the EU on its head by saying that everything is the competence of Brussels unless determined otherwise. It is totally unacceptable to the British people."
….and should be unacceptable to the Irish Republican Army too, who for years blasted, bombed, shot and bludgeoned the hated British over an issue of Irish nationalism and a 'free Ireland', all the while their politicians in Dublin were busy handing the keys of their country over to Brussels. Has anyone told the IRA this yet?
Previously Evans-Pritchard had illustrated in the same newspaper that Tony Blair's personal eminence and influence in Europe has only been secured by trading off a staggering amount of EU integration over the past five years:
"… the abolition of sterling, in principle; the EU-wide arrest warrants for felonies, including thought crimes such as xenophobia; a proto FBI/CIA rolled into one at Europol; the Social Chapter, which has subtly overturned our trade union laws and forced Britain to adopt a disturbingly large number of Germany's labour-market rigidities; anti-discrimination laws that force employers to prove their innocence in court, contravening a core principle of our common law [that a person is innocent until proven guilty]; the Charter of Fundamental Rights - an insidious misnomer - containing a clause authorising suspension of all civic rights, if necessary, in the 'general interest of the Union'; and now a European constitution, switching our final jurisdiction from the House of Lords to the European Court."
Did you know that the European Union has criminalised
the sale of hundreds of perfectly safe vitamin, mineral, food supplement
and herbal products with effect from July 2005?
Thanks to www.healthfreedommovement.com
for the following descriptions:
* Food Supplements Directive 2002/46/EC, formerly
500PC0222: Passed on 12th March 2002. This directive will lead to the
banning of many popular supplements with effect from July 2005 - items
such as boron, many types of calcium, many times of chromium, copper,
mixed tocopherols, iron, vanadium, zinc, food state vitamins. Depending
on interpretation, it could also severely lower the upper limit of many
of the most popular vitamins, like vitamin C, with exhaustive evidence
of safety. Anything not on the positive list when the directive comes
into effect in three years' time will be banned throughout Europe. Anyone
trafficking these banned substances after July 2005 can legally be prosecuted
for committing a criminal act. For you canoe-paddlers, the text of the
directive is at:
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2002/l_183/l_18320020712en00510057.pdf
* Traditional Medicines Directive. This directive seeks to force
herbal medicines and even substances like flower essences into regulatory
procedures like the pharmaceutical industry. The net effect would be the
disappearance of many safe and proven herbals and flower essences from
health shop shelves and the sharp curtailment of innovative natural substances.
Most repugnant, animal testing has become a mandatory part of the process.
* An amendment to the Pharmaceutical Directive. This would give
regulatory agencies like Britain's Medicines Control Agency sweeping powers,
in effect to classify any healthcare product it chooses as a 'drug'. This
would give the MCA unlimited powers to regulate alternative medicines.
It will also give this law supremacy over other European laws, allowing
homoeopathy, vitamins and many types of natural products to be classed
as drugs and subject to licensing, regulation and potential ban.
Those of you furiously writing to your MP/MEP to protest such an intrusion would do well to heed the voice of Jeffrey Titford, another member of the European Parliament:
"Individual MEPs are not essential, nor even an important part [of the EU]. We are interchangeable bit-part actors… participating in a mockery of the parliamentary process…. OUR VOTES CANNOT CHANGE A DIRECTIVE. We are there merely to furnish an illusion of democracy, providing a veneer to conceal what is a fundamentally undemocratic process. The cast may change, but the show always goes on, with the actors collecting their wages at the stage door."
An estimated 400 million pieces of protest mail went
into the EU over the previous vote on these directives. Did your outrage
do any good then? What makes you think anyone in the Euro Parliament can
do anything about it now? Bringing Britain out of the European Union will
mean that Britain, like Norway, Iceland, Greenland and Switzerland, won't
be compelled to obey tens of thousands of unnecessary and damaging directives
we don't need and lived quite happily without for years. Britain's main
advantage is that she is the EU's biggest customer. Do you honestly think
withdrawing from the EU is going damage Britain? Just think what we could
do with the £1.25 million an hour we would save for starters….
Were you aware that all members of the EU's governing structure, together
with the tens of thousands of bureaucrats and civil servants who run the
union, have been granted A LIFETIME IMMUNITY FROM PROSECUTION and are,
by their own admission, above the law?
Here's another FACT: Under Article 12 of Chapter 5
of the Protocol on the Privileges and Immunities of the EU, a blanket,
lifetime immunity can be extended, if necessary, to all officials and
their servants of the institutions, which reads as follows: "In
the territory of each member state and whatever their nationality, officials
and other servants of the Communities shall.... be immune from legal proceedings
in respect of acts performed by them in their official capacity, including
their words (spoken or written). They shall continue to enjoy this immunity
after they have ceased to hold office."
In 1999, when the entire EU Commission resigned, having been exposed for fraud, was one individual prosecuted? Nope. Diplomatic immunity.
Article 1, Chapter 1, Protocol on the Privileges and Immunities of the EU states that "...premises and buildings of the Communities shall be exempt from search, requisition, confiscation or expropriation, and their archives shall be inviolable...."
Thus no buildings or offices, filing cabinets, archives or bottom drawers belonging to the EU, wherever they are located, can be snooped at, searched or inspected… ever. These two exemptions alone place the staff and premises of the EU, in their official capacities, completely above the law, again if required, which of course flies in the face of the basic principle of British or any decent democracy that 'no-one is above the law'.
In reality, legislation wording from the EU is always open to the widest interpretation. Immunity could be granted to just about anyone the EU deems embarrassing enough to the Union to warrant being kept away from the media. Speaking of which, according also to The Independent, 15th January 1996, employees of the EU have immunity from prosecution for deeds and acts performed by them in the discharge of their duties. Criminal investigations by the Belgium police are apparently severely hampered by EU employees' vows of secrecy and claims of diplomatic immunity. Belgian fraud investigators reported that fraud by EU officials was going unchecked.
Article 236 of the Treaty of Amsterdam also effectively gives immunity to employees of the European Commission. "The Court of Justice shall have jurisdiction in any dispute between the Community and its servants within the limits and under the conditions laid down in Staff Regulations and Conditions of Employment." (Eurofaq posting, 16th February 1999)
* Did anyone tell you this also goes for the new European police force? Article 8 of the Treaty of Amsterdam, signed into law via British Statutory Instrument 2973:1997, concerning Europol officers, declares that: "Such persons shall enjoy immunity from suit and legal process in respect of acts, including words written or spoken, done by them in the exercise of their official functions…" No surprises there, then. (Story also covered by PA News, 14th February 1998)
Under the new EU Arrest Warrant, Europol has now
been granted powers to arrest and detain any citizen speaking out against
the EU for up to 9 months without having to provide any evidence.
Lindsay Jenkins, who worked as a senior civil servant
in the British Ministry of Defence for almost ten years, and spent a further
ten working for British and American investment banks in the City, is
today widely acclaimed for her forecasting and documenting of political
and economic trends. In her book The Last Days of Britain (Orange State
Press, ISBN 0-9657812-2-4), she reports:
"The 35 articles of Corpus Juris, A Draft Criminal Code and Code of Procedure, define crimes of fraud with penalties of up to seven years in jail; establish new EU institutions; and procedures for investigations, committals, prosecutions, detentions before trial of up to nine months, trials, and executions of sentences."
Lindsay Jenkins further reports that, "under Corpus Juris, a suspect can be arrested anywhere in the EU, held in jail without a public hearing [Articles 1-8 and 20.3g] and without any evidence produced against them, for indefinite periods of time, and transported around the EU at will. When eventually the accused is tried, a professional judge, without a jury, would declare him guilty or not guilty (Article 26.I)."
Crucially, judges in future no longer have to abide by habeas corpus and consider prima facie evidence against a suspect within 24 hours of detention. Evidence need only be produced at the suspect's trial, which technically can be withheld indefinitely.
Are we therefore completely dumbfounded to discover that the Corpus Juris EU manual itself, (Sous la direction de Mireille Delmas-Marty, ISBN 2-7178-3344-7, p40, para 3), informs us that: "[Corpus Juris is] designed to ensure, in a largely unified European legal area, a fairer, simpler and more efficient system of repression." Yes, the very word used, translated accurately of course into all languages of the European Union.
Under Corpus Juris, Article 24.Ib, the European Public Prosecutor can order a British judge to issue an EU arrest warrant to Europol, or indeed existing national forces, for the purposes of apprehending and holding a citizen on any one of 32 charges, which include 'racism' or 'xenophobia' (see also Amsterdam Treaty, Article 29, Title VI). Racism and xenophobia, while strangely not defined in the CJ criminal code, are increasingly being interpreted to include speaking out against the EU and its policies, according to the EU's European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, based in Vienna.
The House of Lords responds with indignation thus:
"… the powers of remand given to the agents of the European Public Prosecutor [who can] request a person's remand in custody without charge or remand on bail for a period of up to six months, renewable for three months… the prospect that an individual may be held in custody, without charge, for up to nine months is totally unacceptable." (Extracts from House of Lords Select Committee on European Communities 9th Report, 'Prosecuting Fraud on the Communities' Finances' - The Corpus Juris)
Under Article 191 of the Treaty of Nice, the EU has been granted powers by the signatory states to withdraw funding for any European political party it deems inappropriate or unsuitable for Europe.
* Have you been told that if your country is talked
into adopting the euro, all your nation's gold reserves, all silver stocks
and dollar assets will be handed over to the EU's central bank, leaving
your nation independently incapacitated and unable to re-launch its independence?
In fact in Britain, part of this gold transfer has
effectively already been carried out. Reported widely in the press at
the time, author Ashley Mote comments in Vigilance: "Gordon Brown
[British Chancellor of the Exchequer] is actually trying to drag Britain
into the euro by deceit. He sold 415 tons of gold bars (around £4
billion worth). This is more than half the UK's total holdings in gold.
There are now 300 tons remaining of the original stock…. Even our politicians
wouldn't be so stupid as to load up a fleet of Brinks Mat vans and drive
[the gold] to Dover. Even they realise that would bring people onto the
streets, blockading motorways, storming the dockside or the shuttle. Such
a blatant transfer of our assets would have triggered rebellion and anarchy.
[We must consider] the most important question of all: By what right does the EU claim our national assets? And by what right does the UK government claim to be able to dispose of them?"
Gordon Brown used the proceeds from the gold sale to purchase euros, adroitly sidestepping the need for a distressing, physical transfer of the metals to the European Central Bank. Even this support however didn't stop the euro from sliding further.
As for the notion that Britain may try to regain her independence and leave the EU one day, the Daily Telegraph, 20th September 2002, records in its editorial:
"Imagine the scene. The newly elected Prime Minister rises in the Commons and announces that, in accordance with his or her party manifesto, Britain will secede from the European Union. He gets back to Number 10 and takes a call from the EU President.
"You can't secede," says the President "At least you can't unless you get the agreement of three quarters of the votes in the Council of Ministers, a two-thirds majority in the European Parliament and ratification by every single country in the EU. In other words, forget it."
"But we had an election," says the Prime Minister. "This was the main issue. We have a democratic mandate and we are determined to leave."
"Let me pass you to Field Marshal Robespierre
of the European Army who will explain how you will be stopped."
* Did you know that the European Union, which now runs the economies
of 15 countries (soon to expand to 25), has been unable even to have its
own accounts signed off EIGHT YEARS IN SUCCESSION?
Silent Majority reports: The EU wasted nearly £3bn through fraud,
bungling and lax controls in 1996. The EU Court of Auditors found that
5.4 % of the £55bn budget had been paid in error. (Daily Telegraph
18/11/97). The EU Parliamentary Committee on Budgetary Control has
accused the EU of giving misleading information and stalling inquiries
into fraud among its officials involving millions of pounds, dating back
to 1989.
The Committee is threatening to refuse to approve the EC annual accounts [again]. There are an estimated 700 enquiries being conducted by UCLAF. (Daily Telegraph 5th February 1998). The Court of Auditors says measures to combat fraud are still complex, cumbersome and fraught with delays and communication problems. 50% of UCLAF's anti-fraud staff are temporary. Not all databases are operational and management of information is poor. Efforts to fight fraud are hampered by privileges and immunities enjoyed by EU staff. There is an exaggerated hesitation to lift the immunity of suspects. (Financial Times, 25th July 1998).
Fingers in
the till
At least 10% of the European Union's £60-plus billion budget disappears
in fraud and mismanagement EVERY YEAR (Seven Lords Select Committee
Reports, 1988-99; Lords Hansard 25th November 1999, cols. 630-632).
The EU's £5 billion annual foreign aid budget is especially corrupt
and misdirected. How much better do you believe Britain could spend its
£875 million contribution to this fund to improve its own affairs,
free of the worry that this money could be spent in ways that would damage
our precious nation's long-term interests? The corruption and double-dealing
going on in Brussels ALONE should be enough to warn Britain to leave the
EU immediately. But who's speaking up?
Paul van Buitenen did. He was the EU-appointed auditor who brought down Jacques Santer's European Commission on fraud charges by highlighting the worst financial scandal in Euroland's history. Van Buitenen was able to show that billions of euros had been 'misappropriated' by members of the EU élite, such as the ludicrous French commissioner, Edith Cresson, whose live-in dentist became an unlikely beneficiary.
Because of vB's revelations, the EU swung ponderously but predictably into action. Van Buitenen was, of course, suspended without pay by the EU Commission, the very target of his corruption investigations, for doing his job, while the officials he had accused of serious crimes were themselves suspended on full pay. Van Buitenen was later vindicated when a further panel upheld his accusations, resulting in the resignation of Santer's entire EU Commission in 1999.
Yet, such is the extent of the corruption, mediocrity and incompetence going on within the EU that the fraud has continued without check under Mr Prodi's successive regime. Later, van Buitenen published his best-seller, Blowing the Whistle, which did just that, but Europe's citizens remained, as always, apathetic and careless at the revelations.
Hounded but
not silent
The last straw for van Buitenen was the Gestapo-like treatment of the
EU's chief accountant, Marta Andreasen, who had the temerity to declare
that the EU's £63 billion budget was simply 'out of control' and
'massively open to fraud'. Figures could be altered 'without leaving any
trace', she reported, and the EU's accounting system didn't even use double
entry book-keeping, the basic standard of accounting accuracy throughout
the world. Andreasen claimed to have been followed in the streets by a
gang of men in an apparent attempt to intimidate her into silence.
Mr Neil Kinnock (remember him?), in his role as the officially appointed EU sleaze-buster, offered any whistleblowers protection from 'adverse consequences' if they came clean, then promptly reneged on his offer of 'protection' in the case of Ms Andreasen, and even stood by and approved her sacking by the Commission, which again was the very target of Ms Andreasen's corruption concerns. Mr Kinnock was thus able to give the public another opportunity to see for themselves how much his word is really worth.
Mr Kinnock also deliberately lied when he tried to defend his reprehensible actions against Andreasen: "Commission accounts have been endorsed annually by the Court of Auditors." But Neil Kinnock, the EU's supposed Fighter-of-Lies, knows better. This, by the way, was the very same man who was himself busted for sleaze as a Brussels commissioner when the Santer Commission was forced to resign. Ironically, Mr Kinnock was not only reinstated after his resignation, but was given the task of cleaning up fraud within the EU. Which is akin to the wolf telling us someone's been in the hen-house.
Mr Kinnock knows full well that gross financial irregularities in the EU's accounts (that includes the money we've paid to the EU, in case you haven't cottoned on) have prevented accountants at the Court of Auditors from signing them off for EIGHT YEARS in a row. In fact, in a report issued a few weeks prior to Andreasen's professional execution, the Court warned of massive failings in a system, which could not even record how many billions of pounds were being wasted through fraud each year! Even Britain's own National Audit Office found 'persistent weaknesses' in fraud checks by EU states earlier in 2002.
Shadow Deputy Prime Minister David Davis is outraged: "Is there or isn't there a double-entry accounting system? Because if there isn't, then it is unlike any other accounting system in the world that anyone respects."
How Harsh
the Medicine?
I am not against the principle of a 'united' Europe any more than Churchill
was. I'm just against this corrupt, unaccountable, fifth-rate, corporation-driven,
nest-feathering, expense-fiddling, united Europe. There will of course
be those who will resolutely refuse to acknowledge that any of the above
(and a lot more besides) is taking place. Their rose-tinted glasses are
turned obstinately towards the false, shiny, happy days of global socialism
ahead, wherein they believe everyone will dance hand-in-hand and there's
peace, security, harmony and lots of colour everywhere.
Well, we've heard these visions from Mao, Pol Pot, Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, etc. before them - the idea that you can save your people by repressing and controlling them with a million rules and regulations and no accountability. Is it so unreasonable to suppose this current flirtation with dictatorship will NOT end in tears and violence the way its predecessors' did? Look, there are good and honest people working in the EU, to be sure. But if they believe, however misguidedly, that this Union in any way represents firstly the people of Europe, and secondly a freedom and liberty greater than those enjoyed in Britain today, they are greatly mistaken.
But what about the British people themselves, who, like the French, the Germans, the Spanish, the Austrians and Italians across the water, are always the first to suffer at the hands of their politicians? Like imperial Rome in the twilight of her years, could the rot be so ingrained, the hour so late, that the British as a people are unable to make a stand against their own annihilation as a nation?
Do the British need to suffer on their own cross and die in order to be reborn? Could the wars of disassociation that may follow any armed civilian insurrection against the European Union a few years from now be the sacrifice required to shock the British to their senses? From some interviews I have attended, these agonies are described by politicians in muted tones. They recognise there are thousands in Britain who will not stand by and silently watch the destruction of their country. Too much blood has been invested; too many loved ones never came home from the poppy fields of Flanders, the jungles of Burma or the deserts of North Africa. Some never even made it home from the office.
But if the British fail to act in time, then they simply get the future they deserve, and the European play moves to the final scene by default - total political and economic integration. Coerced into breaking down the last of her political character by traitors within and a devious enemy without, Britain will be compelled by the power of treaty to embrace the dark and unfamiliar future she has chosen for herself. Short of war, this final move will be irreversible and final.
Then again, who wants to save a Britain that doesn't want to be saved? Maybe this is the way it has to be. With the causes and horrors of two world wars forgotten or never known or taught to many today, maybe the British have to re-learn the lessons of the past. Maybe, in the midst of all the turmoil, bloodshed and misery that may follow the dawning of the truth of our predicament, we might discover that we needed to be put into this position of such utter, dire peril once more, so we could find forgiveness for all the selfishness and indifference, and in the forgiving, perhaps a kind of redemption.
* * * * *
"There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified." - British Prime Minister, Edward Heath, televised broadcast, January 1973
"Above all, the EEC takes away Britain's freedom to follow the economic policies we need. We will negotiate withdrawal from the EEC which has drained our natural resources and destroyed our jobs." Tony Blair, 1982
"Britain turning its back on Europe would be an error of vast proportions. Be under no doubt: if the economic tests are met, Britain should join the single currency. For Britain to be marginalised in Europe when soon the EU will have 25 members stretching from Portugal to Poland and the largest commercial market in the world, would not just be economically unwise, it would betray a total misunderstanding of the concept of national interest in the 21st century." Tony Blair 2002
Resources:
Ten Minutes to Midnight by Phillip Day
Vigilance by Ashley Mote
The Euro - The Facts (30 min video, UK/Australian format only) by Trevor
Colman
Available from www.credence.org
