eurealist.co.uk

The Guardian reports that UKIP have said that they encouraged people to vote for Jose Barroso in the Today programme poll to find the most powerful person in Britain. Ben Jones, of the European Movement is quoted saying, “They’re using neo-con-style tactics - fairly ruthless, almost propagandist means. Politics should be done through rational argument, not by manipulating the media.”
Guardian

I find it utterly astounding for an EU Propagandist to say something like that, it is rather like the pot calling the kettles black, is it not. What rational arguments have the likes of the European Movement offered to the people of this country for giving away our sovereignty? How much of our money does the EU spend on its own propaganda each and every year assisted by The European Movement; which organisation moreover is not averse to using its own black propaganda techniques; reading its introduction by Lord Haskins of Skidby it purposely confuses the EU with the Council of Europe, claiming the old Churchill linkage.

http://www.euromove.org.uk/about

The origins of the European Movement lie in the aftermath of the Second World War. More than eight hundred delegates from across Europe gathered in The Hague in May 1948, under the chairmanship of Sir Winston Churchill, to create a new international movement to unite Europe and prevent further wars between its members

All true; however Churchill was not in favour of the EU, or the integration of Great Britain into a greater Europe, preferring a Europe of sovereign Nation States, and nowadays as the European Movement knows full well, everyone associates European integration with the EU and not the Council of Europe.

I do not know if the claim made against the UKIP is true, however even assuming it is, UKIP is only doing what it intends; and that is to let people know how much the EU intrudes on our daily lives; which is something those in The European Movement would not really like the people of this country to understand, until that is it is too late to do anything about it.

Rational political argument should be used to inform the people of this country not to hide the facts; it should also include the argument as to whether we want to be part of the EU in the first place.

EUSURF has just written a post about the pre-Christmas report from The EU Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights, an advisory panel to the EU. In the 40 page document they challenge the right to religious freedom if it conflicts with the European Charta of Fundamental Rights;

Their opinion considered the right to conscientious objection in light of a proposed treaty between the Vatican and Slovakia. This treaty would guarantee that Catholic hospitals and medical professionals would not be legally obligated to “perform artificial abortions, artificial or assisted fertilizations, experiments with or handling of human organs, human embryos or human sex cells, euthanasia, cloning, sterilizations, [and] acts connected with contraception.

While the Network acknowledged the right to conscientious objection,( that is nice of them) it warned that such a right was not “unlimited.” “Indeed, the right to religious conscientious objection may conflict with other rights, also recognized under international law. In such circumstances, an adequate balance must be struck between these conflicting requirements, which may not lead to one right being sacrificed to another.”

They say they are calling for a balance to be struck between the two rights, but that balance seems on further reading not to be a balance at all but rather the removal of the right to religious conscientious objection.

The opinion declares that the “right to religious conscientious objection” “should be regulated in order to ensure that, in circumstances where abortion is legal, no woman shall be deprived from having effective access to the medical service of abortion. In the view of the Network, this implies that the State concerned must ensure, first, that an effective remedy should be open to challenge any refusal to provide abortion; second, that an obligation will be imposed on the health care practitioner exercising his or her right to religious conscientious objection to refer the woman seeking abortion to another qualified health care practitioner who will agree to perform the abortion; third, that another qualified health care practitioner will be indeed available, including in rural areas or in areas which are geographically remote from the centre.”

Back to EUSURF who says

So the EU in all its wisdom, wants to force doctors to go against their most deeply held beliefs, and perform procedures that they cannot do with a clear conscience.

Two points:
1) What happened to freedom of religion?
2) Do we really want these people telling us which rights are fundamental and which are not?

The answer to the second question is; whether we want it or not; we seem to have a new set of rights; which when forced on us, will overrule and overturn a basic right to live by the dictates of your own conscience and force the new secular religion on all of us. Thus it is a direct challenge to the settled teaching of the Catholic church, not that this should come as any great surprise after the Buttiglione controversy when the EU Parliament made it quite clear that Catholic teachings had no place in the EU.

Of course we do have freedom of religion, only it must take account of the new secular religion that resides within the EU. It would seem that not only are EU laws and the EU constitution (when it comes) to be superior to state law and constitution, but the Secularism in the EU is to be superior to religious teachings.