eurealist.co.uk

There will be those who in a effort to sustain the facade of democratic choice within the EU will try to dismiss the ex German foreign minister as a ranting crank who does not speak for the real EU.

Unfortunately for them Fischer is not alone in his views, he is after all only expressing bluntly the basic guiding principles that have been utilised to ensure the formation of the Union, principles that so far have been hidden behind a facade of imaginary democracy.

Monett would have been fully behind such sentiments because he believed that a technocratic central power was the only method that would ensure the building of the Union, understanding that if left to the people the whole edifice of the EU would never have got off the ground in the first place.
The shift from government to governance has been created deliberately to ensure the people cannot stand in the way of the creation of the Union, democracy has been reinvented and is understood to be expressed by allowing the people an input in the debate, but the reins of decision making are at all times firmly held in the control of the EU officials, who are placed beyond the effects of democratic control.

Efficient decision-making has displaced the ideals of representative government and Fischer’s ideas are all about efficiency, he therefore sees states who listen to their electorates as weak and inefficient because democracy is not an efficient tool. Neither for that matter are basic human rights, if democracy can get in the way of the execution of political plans, so can human rights who is to argue that these should not also be sacrificed on the altar of efficiency. That is where and governance cannot replace democracy because if you do create a situation where those in power are divorced from the effects of democratic control at the end of the day you only have their continuing good will to rely on as a safeguard against tyranny. Some might argue no that is wrong they would be a constitution to control the technocratic centre but they will not recognise that as the technocrats are in charge of the constitution they are also in control of their own rules of behaviour.

Efficiency in the case of the EU is replacing democratic choice, we must ask of ourselves do we want to live in a state when the laws we are forced to obey are designed for efficiency of the ruling system where our legal rights are defined by the efficient working of the legal system, or should efficiency be subject to controls of the democratic will of the people and the protection of the individual against the state.

Efficient law enforcement can be achieved by allowing the police greater powers and by removing the traditional protections of the accused, we can remove the right to be tried by a jury and found guilty before being punished, we can remove the traditional division of powers in the legal system and allow the police to become not only the accuser, but the judge and the executioner, that would create an efficient law enforcement regime, but do we want such a system and would we trust such a system.
Within the EU we do not have the control that allows us to say no we do not want your system, and so there is growing public disenchantment with the whole idea of a central authority that need not listen to the people.

Faced with widespread public disenchantment with a system designed to be efficient but one that overrides the public choice in so many areas of concern, the EU officials claim that is because EU institutions have not managed to sell themselves properly, they have not managed to get the message across, that referendums cannot be used to solve complex matters, or that national politicians are to blame because refuse to explain to their own electorates that modern problems cannot be solved by national governments. Such lines of thought implicitly suggest that the problem lies not with the EU, the EU institutions or the EU system of governance, but instead with the people who are not intelligent enough to grasp the subtleties of the European treaties and cannot be trusted to make the right decisions.

The antagonism and growing hostility to the EU is not the people misunderstanding what the EU is about, or fear of a growing EU superstate. But is clear resistance to what the EU actually is, the people do not like the way the EU operates the way decisions are made about serious subjects which affect their everyday lives over their heads, in an arena of EU policymaking which denies democratic choice.

The public opposition is not the result of confusion or misunderstanding. It is related to the transformation of the European state documented in Wall’s book. The backlash against the EU is part of a wider reaction against a vision of politics which is technocratic and only asks of us that we trust our political elites and their ability to improve our lives. If we want to build a progressive response to the populist backlash, we need to go beyond the politics of consensus. We need to combat this rising wave of disenchantment with a positive and coherent call for political renewal and change.
http://mondediplo.com/2008/07/08europe

Perhaps is the area of greatest confusion and divergence between those who support the formation of the union, even though many of them also claim that this union requires radical change before it can be acceptable, and those of us who are distinctly anti such a movement. The pro EU change brigade including our own Conservative Party, are under the illusion that the EU is something it is not and would dismiss the claims of dictatorship or autocratic rule out of hand.

Yet after listening to the likes of Joschka Fischer nobody should still be labouring under the illusion that the Union is based on anything like the democratic principal or in fact could be so based. When he says the process of democracy is weakening the West and accuses national government of opportunism, lack of determination, and cowardice in the face of democracy and charges politicians with self interest because they consider their own election prospects above the needs of the union, he is clearly advocating the formation of nothing less than a state based not on democracy but on technocratic authoritarianism. An autocratic despotic state where the people and their representatives must be disconnected from any influence over the operation or the direction of power, where our own representatives are provoked and cajoled into ignoring the wishes of those they are elected to serve.
Thus having completely failed to carry the people with them on their journey of construction the EU proponents now make it clear that they never intended to allow a little thing like democracy stand in their way.

We in Britain have come to understand that the very foundation of a state’s authority rests with the people, thus without the supporting will of the people the structure of the state will collapse into a meaningless jumble of distressed powers. Yet within the sphere of the European Union decision-making is governed by administrative procedure, not by popular will, thus the democratic principal is seen not as the base for its authority but as an inconvenience that has to be administered.

In the world inhabited by the EU autocrats the public will as expressed at the ballot box, is just one of the influences on decision making and only then a very small influence that only must be addressed if the pesky local politicians insist on actually asking the people.

EU officials instead reach agreements on policy after a series of discussions with NGOs lobbyists and other single interest groups in a system designed to be an administrative procedure, where there is no place available for public debate or public involvement. A system moreover that allows the EU official to choose who to ask and who to ignore, where public involvement is relegated to the role of cannon fodder for the pollsters. In such a process it is difficult to imagine the wishes of the people being given a leading role, where the voters are seen not as the basis for authority but as a hurdle to be surmounted or by passed, or if that is not possible to be ignored, a technocratic system designed to be self governing and self supporting where as Fischer says public involvement can only weaken the EU.

Faced with the rejection of the Constitution, its rehash in the Lisbon Treaty and the as yet unacknowledged popular widespread rejection of the central EU bureaucracy right across the EU, Joschka Fischer writing in Die Zeit newspaper last week has put some bones on the thinking behind the idea of a central core of states that want to proceed with further political integration.

Not only should they be allowed to do so, but the decisions made by the elite or Avant garde group will dictate policy inside Europe and compel the other states to agree to their conditions. Fischer therefore envisions a two speed EU as a tool for further integration, what we are being told is evidence that the EU is going our way would be nothing more than cover for further political integration, because it will be the central core of states who will make the rules and make the running with those not prepared to join the central core push towards a fully federal EU being confined to the sidelines when it comes to decision making but expected to follow the rules, so much for the idea of being at the centre of the EU and the idea of a two speed EU meaning not proceeding at a different pace towards the same goal.

Fischer sees the inclusion of the people in the decision making process as in the Irish referendum or any other for that matter, as having a wakening effect on the power of the union. He said ;

“power and decision-making authority” of Europe should not be sacrificed for the sake of the democratic will of the people.”

Let us just ponder that for a moment as the concept is so breathtaking in a supposedly democratic country that it really does beggar belief;

EUROPE SHOULD NOT BE SACRIFICED FOR THE SAKE OF THE DEMOCRATIC WILL OF THE PEOPLE.

The EU and the power of the EU and of its political leaders is more important than democracy.

I suspect we in the West would have a greater understanding and recognition of their real meaning of such sentiments if they were made by the leader of for instance China or by the North Korean glorious leader Kim Jong Il in a speech extolling the virtues of greater individual sacrifice for the good of all. We would automatically understand that such sentiments have no place in a western democracy; they are out of place and in Europe out of time.

Even if in Europe Fischer’s censure of democratic decision-making calls to mind historical parallels, we have it seems unfortunately not learned the lesson. Although Europe has experienced the effects autocrat philosophy can have on peace prosperity and the very fabric of society within living memory, we do not seem to have completely eradicated the concept. We have not taken on board that political vision needs to be tested at all times on the fire of the democratic will of the people where the ideas must be weathered and burnished in the court of public opinion, if the vision of society is to be generally accepted as being appropriate. Europe in the shape of the EU has therefore reproduced the very thing it was created to obliterate from the political map, because stripped of it fine clothing as Fischer has done the EU is nothing more than an fully fledged authoritarian enterprise, one moreover that can only be realised by the suppression of democratic rights.

Bonekickers BCC1 Tuesday 9pm

What a load of unmitigated twaddle the drama program the first of a series was a convoluted cross between Time Team, Waking the Dead and The Da Vinci Code with a little bit of Highlander thrown in for good measure with, none of the verve associated with any of the forgoing. The whole package burdened with a very large dollop of BBC anti Christian politically correct prejudice.

Most of the time was spent waiting in anticipation for Tony Robinson to rush onto the dig and breathlessly announce that the team only had half a day to finish up and discover who done it.

The story such as it was revolved around the discovery of 12th century murder scene, it was discovered that a group Knights Templars, described as the Popes SAS, were escaping from France and were attacked and murdered by apparently Saracens, of course it turned out they were not really Saracens but another group of murdering Christians who were only dressed as Muslims and dropped hints of Muslim involvement in order to make the plot more complicatedly PC some 700 hundred years later.

There was no pity allowed for the Templars as it was stated twice in the hour long program that their job for the Pope had been to murder Muslims, the clear implication that these were defenceless, peace loving individuals being reinforced when a modern day Templar with mad staring hate filled eyes, unceremoniously hacked off the head of a young Muslim lad who was pleading “it does not have to be this way we can live in peace”.

The modern Templars were orphans who were brainwashed by a right wing Christian religious fanatic, who for some unexplained reason forgo modern day weapons in favour of the 13th century broad sword were portrayed as unbalanced troubled souls who understood that murdering defenceless Muslims was wrong but just could not stop themselves, the brainwashing I suppose.

We are becoming accustomed to the PC totally re-writing the history of the Crusades with Hollywood films such as Kingdom of Heaven and the impression that the Crusades were evidence of European cultural and economic expansion, rather than a reaction against three centuries of Islamic Jihad.

This was just another wasteful un-entertaining attempt to justify present day Islamic terrorism by reference to religious wars, which took place over a thousand years ago.

It was amateurish anti-Christian pro-Islamic propaganda at it worst, with un-historical nonsense being passed off as unquestionable facts that have a real relevance in today’s world. Where we are faced not only with ongoing Islamic Jihad but one that is carried out by a real band of religious fanatics, who use modern day weapons to create as much mayhem as they possibly can. A shame on the BBC for producing and showing such unbalanced and politically biased rubbish in these days when our own freedoms are being removed by our governments in a fight to contain today’s Islamic Jihad.