A modified version of Saturday's BOM post has appeared today on TCW, to much comment:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/why-we-must-jump-off-the-brussels-train-before-it-derails/
Tuesday, June 04, 2019
Saturday, June 01, 2019
The Left Has "A Dream Image" Of The EU
It was almost a joy watching Labour’s Barry Gardiner mansplaining Norway and Turkey options to the Brexit Party’s Alex Phillips on Question Time, forgetting that the EU has just disbanded its Brexit negotiating team to emphasise Juncker’s long-held position that it’s May’s Withdrawal Agreement or nothing.
Not that Gardiner was addressing the audience question, which was asking whether the Tory leadership contest was akin to changing the captain of the Titanic after it had hit the iceberg. Or indeed that it was his turn to speak (do get a grip, Fiona.) But at least it bought a bit more time for Rory Stewart to scribble notes, his drawn face bent over his notepad.
The one thing that won’t have been on Rory’s jotter is a fully-articulated political philosophy – the Conservatives have long prided themselves on not having one. In this respect they resemble Labour and LibDem, for all of them have become debating-point opportunists; and that is why, with luck, they are doomed.
For all the splother from our mainstream parties, none of them shows any understanding of the EU. On they bang about economics, when anyone who takes the trouble to read can see that the EU is a political project aiming for Empire. Why, Verhofstadt has just said it openly. To Remain is not to stand still, but to keep seated on a train headed for an unpleasant destination.
The train won’t get there and it would be well for us not to be on board when it derails. One reason is that we are jointly liable for the EU’s debts and can be called upon to make good shortfalls or even bail them out in a major crisis, as the Bruges Group explains.
But it’s about more than finance, and it’s time for us to reconsider our principles - even if, on the Right, they are rather fuzzy (as giant corporations come to dominate, is freedom a Left issue, or a Right one?)
Some on the Left side are starting to draw designs on their pads. Here is Costas Lapavitsas, ex-MP in the Greek Parliament, giving the rationale for his recent book “The Left Case Against The EU.” It's well worth watching, but for the time-poor I give a rough summary below.
He has written this book for three reasons: the public is ill-informed about the EU; the Left has a false ‘dream image’ of the EU and lacks a coherent argument for its position; others can learn about the EU’s approach from its treatment of Greece’s Syriza government in 2016.
The British Left used to be Eurosceptic but now has a ‘completely imaginary picture’ of the EU. Also, it has lost its belief in a socialist alternative to neoliberalism.
On the common currency/EMU: it was created by the French to ‘tie Germany in’ after the latter’s reunification. That was a miscalculation – the Euro has helped German business, especially in exports, and Germany has emerged as the ‘hegemonic power’ of Europe. France is losing to Germany economically and politically.
The Eurozone crisis was systemic, but that was not obvious to EU functionaries. Lapavitsas had thought they would see sense and rebalance the member economies, especially Germany’s, but no.
The EU’s behaviour towards Greece was ‘abominable’, with a disregard for democracy. Greece was treated as ‘a kind of new colony’ [RN: remember Verhoftstadt’s aides saying the same about the UK on camera? Here’s a Greek word for them: hubris.] And in Cyprus, the EU took savers’ money to rescue the banks.
Since Maastricht the EU has been a ‘paradigm of neoliberalism’, the ‘four freedoms’ acting as ‘powerful levers’ and enforced by the ECJ. The EU is a neoliberal ‘juggernaut’; Brussels is ‘one of the main lobby points for big business.’
The Left has advocated ‘Remain and reform’, claiming that what it wants can be achieved within the existing structures of the EU. Lapavitsas replies (a) in that case, why is reform needed? Actually, the EU blocks such attempts; (b) It’s been tried and found wanting, as Greece discovered in 2015. It failed immediately. Britain may be bigger, but will get the same opposition.
The EU has ‘a long history of democratic deficit,’ widening over the last two decades. (1) Economic policy has been ‘depoliticised’ and the democratic vote means very little – a Left Greek government and a Right Italian one were both told to comply with EU policies. So what is the point of voting? (2) See how the EU intervenes when challenged: forcing re-votes after a referendum result it doesn’t like; asserting the power of the Council of Ministers and replacing Greek and Italian governments.
The vaunted ‘freedom of movement’ is not about individual rights, but corporate ones: the EU favours capital and allows it to relocate labour as it wishes. Lapavitsas says ‘the local community also has to be protected’ and the Left has forgotten its tradition of workers’ internationalism.
Corbyn’s Labour is conflicted It needs a more radical program than 2017’s. It needs a profound industrial strategy, less dependent on the service sector and the City. It needs a plan for State aid, public procurement and financing, in a way that the EU will not allow. The EU imposes severe restraints, the WTO less so. We need to address inequalities of income and wealth, and to reform trading practices.
Where does he see the EU in ten years’ time? It faces existential crisis, not only among peripheral countries but most of all in its core. Italy is stagnant. France cannot compete with Germany and if it adopts German policies will fail; the public are rebelling. Add in the democratic deficit and people’s sense of powerlessness and the EU finds itself in a very difficult position.
Lapavitsas cannot see monetary union surviving – it will probably go, in the next global crisis. After that the EU will change into a loose alliance, an ‘empty shell’; the Maastricht years won’t come back.
The European Left needs to get its act together ‘or the political outcomes will not be very good at all.’
Not that Gardiner was addressing the audience question, which was asking whether the Tory leadership contest was akin to changing the captain of the Titanic after it had hit the iceberg. Or indeed that it was his turn to speak (do get a grip, Fiona.) But at least it bought a bit more time for Rory Stewart to scribble notes, his drawn face bent over his notepad.
The one thing that won’t have been on Rory’s jotter is a fully-articulated political philosophy – the Conservatives have long prided themselves on not having one. In this respect they resemble Labour and LibDem, for all of them have become debating-point opportunists; and that is why, with luck, they are doomed.
For all the splother from our mainstream parties, none of them shows any understanding of the EU. On they bang about economics, when anyone who takes the trouble to read can see that the EU is a political project aiming for Empire. Why, Verhofstadt has just said it openly. To Remain is not to stand still, but to keep seated on a train headed for an unpleasant destination.
The train won’t get there and it would be well for us not to be on board when it derails. One reason is that we are jointly liable for the EU’s debts and can be called upon to make good shortfalls or even bail them out in a major crisis, as the Bruges Group explains.
But it’s about more than finance, and it’s time for us to reconsider our principles - even if, on the Right, they are rather fuzzy (as giant corporations come to dominate, is freedom a Left issue, or a Right one?)
Some on the Left side are starting to draw designs on their pads. Here is Costas Lapavitsas, ex-MP in the Greek Parliament, giving the rationale for his recent book “The Left Case Against The EU.” It's well worth watching, but for the time-poor I give a rough summary below.
He has written this book for three reasons: the public is ill-informed about the EU; the Left has a false ‘dream image’ of the EU and lacks a coherent argument for its position; others can learn about the EU’s approach from its treatment of Greece’s Syriza government in 2016.
The British Left used to be Eurosceptic but now has a ‘completely imaginary picture’ of the EU. Also, it has lost its belief in a socialist alternative to neoliberalism.
On the common currency/EMU: it was created by the French to ‘tie Germany in’ after the latter’s reunification. That was a miscalculation – the Euro has helped German business, especially in exports, and Germany has emerged as the ‘hegemonic power’ of Europe. France is losing to Germany economically and politically.
The Eurozone crisis was systemic, but that was not obvious to EU functionaries. Lapavitsas had thought they would see sense and rebalance the member economies, especially Germany’s, but no.
The EU’s behaviour towards Greece was ‘abominable’, with a disregard for democracy. Greece was treated as ‘a kind of new colony’ [RN: remember Verhoftstadt’s aides saying the same about the UK on camera? Here’s a Greek word for them: hubris.] And in Cyprus, the EU took savers’ money to rescue the banks.
Since Maastricht the EU has been a ‘paradigm of neoliberalism’, the ‘four freedoms’ acting as ‘powerful levers’ and enforced by the ECJ. The EU is a neoliberal ‘juggernaut’; Brussels is ‘one of the main lobby points for big business.’
The Left has advocated ‘Remain and reform’, claiming that what it wants can be achieved within the existing structures of the EU. Lapavitsas replies (a) in that case, why is reform needed? Actually, the EU blocks such attempts; (b) It’s been tried and found wanting, as Greece discovered in 2015. It failed immediately. Britain may be bigger, but will get the same opposition.
The EU has ‘a long history of democratic deficit,’ widening over the last two decades. (1) Economic policy has been ‘depoliticised’ and the democratic vote means very little – a Left Greek government and a Right Italian one were both told to comply with EU policies. So what is the point of voting? (2) See how the EU intervenes when challenged: forcing re-votes after a referendum result it doesn’t like; asserting the power of the Council of Ministers and replacing Greek and Italian governments.
The vaunted ‘freedom of movement’ is not about individual rights, but corporate ones: the EU favours capital and allows it to relocate labour as it wishes. Lapavitsas says ‘the local community also has to be protected’ and the Left has forgotten its tradition of workers’ internationalism.
Corbyn’s Labour is conflicted It needs a more radical program than 2017’s. It needs a profound industrial strategy, less dependent on the service sector and the City. It needs a plan for State aid, public procurement and financing, in a way that the EU will not allow. The EU imposes severe restraints, the WTO less so. We need to address inequalities of income and wealth, and to reform trading practices.
Where does he see the EU in ten years’ time? It faces existential crisis, not only among peripheral countries but most of all in its core. Italy is stagnant. France cannot compete with Germany and if it adopts German policies will fail; the public are rebelling. Add in the democratic deficit and people’s sense of powerlessness and the EU finds itself in a very difficult position.
Lapavitsas cannot see monetary union surviving – it will probably go, in the next global crisis. After that the EU will change into a loose alliance, an ‘empty shell’; the Maastricht years won’t come back.
The European Left needs to get its act together ‘or the political outcomes will not be very good at all.’
Friday, May 31, 2019
FRIDAY MUSIC: Rahsaan Roland Kirk's Creative Chaos, by JD
In the middle of all this current political chaos, fake or otherwise, I think we deserve to have some real and creative chaos which is genuinely inspiring and joyful.
If you are of a nervous disposition, look away now (as they say on the telly) but if not, fasten your seatbelts and turn up the volume for the unique and legendary Rahsaan Roland Kirk!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahsaan_Roland_Kirk
If you are of a nervous disposition, look away now (as they say on the telly) but if not, fasten your seatbelts and turn up the volume for the unique and legendary Rahsaan Roland Kirk!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahsaan_Roland_Kirk
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Voter Suppression in the USA, by "Paddington"
In the good old days, the primary paths to power were generally simple. Things like birthright, marriage, assassination and conquest.
Now that most countries are democratic, at least in theory, one must claw to the top of some power structure, and then be elected.
One way to do the latter is to convince enough voters that they need you. This carries a high risk of failure.
To increase the odds, one could take the route favoured by Saddam Hussein, and famously described by Stalin, “It doesn't matter how the people vote, only who counts the votes”. While effective, this method requires a large conspiracy, which is hard to maintain.
In some places of the US, such as Chicago and Miami, Florida, a popular method used to be what is called the 'graveyard vote', having people impersonate dead voters. In New York, they just got enough street dwellers drunk and marched them to the polls.
With better modern record keeping, these methods are much less effective. In fact, despite claims by Republicans of millions of illegal aliens voting, and massive voter fraud, repeated investigation has only uncovered a handful of cases nationwide in the past two decades. Most of those were Republicans, claiming to 'test the system'.
It is the South, now primarily Republican, which has outdone itself, with the simple tactic of voter suppression.
We can begin with the founding of the Republic. The slave-holding states realized that their population was mostly slaves, and so apportionment of Congressional seats by population would leave them with little power. Hence, the allocation of two Senate seats per state, and the famous '3/5 compromise', where slaves counted as 3/5 of a regular person.
After the Civil War, the 14th and 15th amendments now allowed all former slaves to vote, so a new tactic was needed. The answer was to arrest the now-homeless freemen under vagrancy laws. Not only could they not vote while in prison, but also were generally prevented from doing so if they ever got out. An added bonus was that slavery was still allowed for people in prison, so they were a tremendous source of free labour, a system which lasts through today. This method was supplemented with poll taxes, which the African-Americans couldn't afford to pay, and literacy tests, which were strangely harder for people of colour.
Under the cover of claiming massive voter fraud, there have been major moves to require 'valid' identification to vote. This sounds reasonable enough, doesn't it? Now consider:
1. Texas accepts a state-issued Concealed-Carry Weapons permit as valid, but not a state-issued university ID card (those 'liberal' students)
2. Many older African-Americans in the South cannot get their birth certificates, as most were not born in official hospitals, and so cannot get ID.
3. In Arkansas, the single office to get a state ID (for those without a driver's license) is only open for a few hours on the fifth Wednesday of a month (not a joke).
And then there are the other clever techniques used most recently in 2018:
1. A bus in Georgia was taking a group of African-American retirees from a nursing home to the polls. The white workers at the home stopped the bus, and dragged them off.
2. In Georgia, there is automatic voter registration when a driver's license is renewed. But, it only registers the person for the national elections, not the local and state ones, keeping things like the Sheriff's position away from 'those people'.
3. A law in Arizona required voters to have a street address. Most Native Americans use rural post boxes, without one.
4. Dodge City, Kansas, closed its single polling station, and moved it a mile out of the city, miles away from any bus route.
5. The state party in charge after each census gets to decide the Congressional map for the state. In the last elections, Republicans have so gerrymandered the districts that they were awarded 12 of 16 seats in Congress for Ohio while only getting 52% of the vote.
While our leadership lectures the rest of the world on democracy, we behave more like a banana republic.
___________________________
Further reading (Ed.):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States
... and a recent example from Texas:
https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article/the-frontlines-of-voter-suppression-in-the-us#
Now that most countries are democratic, at least in theory, one must claw to the top of some power structure, and then be elected.
One way to do the latter is to convince enough voters that they need you. This carries a high risk of failure.
To increase the odds, one could take the route favoured by Saddam Hussein, and famously described by Stalin, “It doesn't matter how the people vote, only who counts the votes”. While effective, this method requires a large conspiracy, which is hard to maintain.
In some places of the US, such as Chicago and Miami, Florida, a popular method used to be what is called the 'graveyard vote', having people impersonate dead voters. In New York, they just got enough street dwellers drunk and marched them to the polls.
With better modern record keeping, these methods are much less effective. In fact, despite claims by Republicans of millions of illegal aliens voting, and massive voter fraud, repeated investigation has only uncovered a handful of cases nationwide in the past two decades. Most of those were Republicans, claiming to 'test the system'.
It is the South, now primarily Republican, which has outdone itself, with the simple tactic of voter suppression.
We can begin with the founding of the Republic. The slave-holding states realized that their population was mostly slaves, and so apportionment of Congressional seats by population would leave them with little power. Hence, the allocation of two Senate seats per state, and the famous '3/5 compromise', where slaves counted as 3/5 of a regular person.
After the Civil War, the 14th and 15th amendments now allowed all former slaves to vote, so a new tactic was needed. The answer was to arrest the now-homeless freemen under vagrancy laws. Not only could they not vote while in prison, but also were generally prevented from doing so if they ever got out. An added bonus was that slavery was still allowed for people in prison, so they were a tremendous source of free labour, a system which lasts through today. This method was supplemented with poll taxes, which the African-Americans couldn't afford to pay, and literacy tests, which were strangely harder for people of colour.
Under the cover of claiming massive voter fraud, there have been major moves to require 'valid' identification to vote. This sounds reasonable enough, doesn't it? Now consider:
1. Texas accepts a state-issued Concealed-Carry Weapons permit as valid, but not a state-issued university ID card (those 'liberal' students)
2. Many older African-Americans in the South cannot get their birth certificates, as most were not born in official hospitals, and so cannot get ID.
3. In Arkansas, the single office to get a state ID (for those without a driver's license) is only open for a few hours on the fifth Wednesday of a month (not a joke).
And then there are the other clever techniques used most recently in 2018:
1. A bus in Georgia was taking a group of African-American retirees from a nursing home to the polls. The white workers at the home stopped the bus, and dragged them off.
2. In Georgia, there is automatic voter registration when a driver's license is renewed. But, it only registers the person for the national elections, not the local and state ones, keeping things like the Sheriff's position away from 'those people'.
3. A law in Arizona required voters to have a street address. Most Native Americans use rural post boxes, without one.
4. Dodge City, Kansas, closed its single polling station, and moved it a mile out of the city, miles away from any bus route.
5. The state party in charge after each census gets to decide the Congressional map for the state. In the last elections, Republicans have so gerrymandered the districts that they were awarded 12 of 16 seats in Congress for Ohio while only getting 52% of the vote.
While our leadership lectures the rest of the world on democracy, we behave more like a banana republic.
___________________________
Further reading (Ed.):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States
... and a recent example from Texas:
https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article/the-frontlines-of-voter-suppression-in-the-us#
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Business Rat Spoiler Alert System?
From China Daily, news of a fresh twist to the national program of mutual snitching: debt-shaming by smartphone.
Hebei court unveils phone program to expose deadbeats
... With the program, smartphone users can find out how many deadbeats are within 500 meters, as well as their personal information, which they can use to share with friends or report them to the court.
Wang Yanling, a resident in Chang'an district in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, said she was so surprised when she found so many debtors near her.
"The program shows there are 87 defaulters around my home at Huicui Garden, including individuals and companies such as restaurants and real estate developers," she said.
Wang said she would check the blacklist on the program first next time she wants to go to a restaurant.
We're used to being spied on in the West - not just Five Eyes intergovernmental sharing of information about us, but the rash of trackers attaching themselves as we look around online so that they can target adverts.
But if we're going in for this kind of thing, how about making it work for us?
Wouldn't it be useful to know, before signing a contract to supply goods or services, whether the other party has swindled others? What if such information was so commonly available that such people were driven out of business for lack of victims?
Let me give you a couple of examples I know about.
Case 1: a successful small shopfitting company has a sub-department turning wood products for commercial furnishing and refurbishments. King Rat puts in a big order and when the work is done, withholds payment, falsely claiming that some of the goods were not as specified. The cashflow crisis puts the whole company into receivership; the receiver sells off goods at 10p in the pound - including the original order, to King Rat. The buildings are flogged off at 50% of bricks and mortar value (all this is standard in the world of receivership); a couple of dozen workers are laid off; the director is landed with surplus personal debt after all this bargain basement raiding.
Case 2: another firm completes work and the director goes to see a different King Rat to settle up. Everything has been done satisfactorily, the latter agrees. He then says there are two options: sue him for the £100k owed - and KR has deep pockets for the legal case, which will take a long time; or accept £50k now - "it can be in your bank account this afternoon" (which will wipe out the profit and leave a fair bit of the costs uncovered, too.) There is no choice but to accept the swindle.
This kind of thing is one reason small enterprises struggle to rise and often fail, especially as recession looms.
What if there were some extraterritorial whistleblower setup that could automatically warn all potential contractors via their phones?
If only.
Btw the above Chinese story - quoted in this week's Private Eye - is accompanied there by another, about outsourcing traffic law enforcement to bounty hunters:
"How New Yorkers are making bank ratting out idling drivers."
Hebei court unveils phone program to expose deadbeats
... With the program, smartphone users can find out how many deadbeats are within 500 meters, as well as their personal information, which they can use to share with friends or report them to the court.
Wang Yanling, a resident in Chang'an district in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, said she was so surprised when she found so many debtors near her.
"The program shows there are 87 defaulters around my home at Huicui Garden, including individuals and companies such as restaurants and real estate developers," she said.
Wang said she would check the blacklist on the program first next time she wants to go to a restaurant.
We're used to being spied on in the West - not just Five Eyes intergovernmental sharing of information about us, but the rash of trackers attaching themselves as we look around online so that they can target adverts.
But if we're going in for this kind of thing, how about making it work for us?
Wouldn't it be useful to know, before signing a contract to supply goods or services, whether the other party has swindled others? What if such information was so commonly available that such people were driven out of business for lack of victims?
Let me give you a couple of examples I know about.
Case 1: a successful small shopfitting company has a sub-department turning wood products for commercial furnishing and refurbishments. King Rat puts in a big order and when the work is done, withholds payment, falsely claiming that some of the goods were not as specified. The cashflow crisis puts the whole company into receivership; the receiver sells off goods at 10p in the pound - including the original order, to King Rat. The buildings are flogged off at 50% of bricks and mortar value (all this is standard in the world of receivership); a couple of dozen workers are laid off; the director is landed with surplus personal debt after all this bargain basement raiding.
Case 2: another firm completes work and the director goes to see a different King Rat to settle up. Everything has been done satisfactorily, the latter agrees. He then says there are two options: sue him for the £100k owed - and KR has deep pockets for the legal case, which will take a long time; or accept £50k now - "it can be in your bank account this afternoon" (which will wipe out the profit and leave a fair bit of the costs uncovered, too.) There is no choice but to accept the swindle.
This kind of thing is one reason small enterprises struggle to rise and often fail, especially as recession looms.
What if there were some extraterritorial whistleblower setup that could automatically warn all potential contractors via their phones?
If only.
Btw the above Chinese story - quoted in this week's Private Eye - is accompanied there by another, about outsourcing traffic law enforcement to bounty hunters:
"How New Yorkers are making bank ratting out idling drivers."
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
EU Superstate: Pointless AND Dangerous
The point that so many commentators are missing about the EU, is that it’s lost its point. It began as a peace movement disguised as a mutually beneficial trading arrangement. Now it is failing at both projects; and worse yet, it is becoming dangerous.
Peace
Jean Monnet laboured over decades to achieve it through European union: never again should there be Continental war between France and Germany.
But by the time his post-WWII project was launched, that conflict wasn’t possible in any case. Like the rest of Western Europe, France was struggling to recover from the war effort, while Germany was divided and occupied by the Communists on one side, and British and American armed forces on the other.
Again today, even after German reunification, it’s not going to happen. The nations of the Common Market have bound themselves together with Lilliputian threads. As North and Booker show, the Common Agricultural Policy saved France from Left revolt by subsiding its small farmers during reforms to their sector, and since January’s Aachen Treaty the two nations are committed to regular biannual joint Parliaments to tackle joint problems.
Trade
As well as easing inter-member trading, the Community was also a bulwark against globalism, using its joint external tariffs to guard against cheap-production Far Eastern economies.
That is, until its mania for expansion took hold, and other countries were absorbed, whose poorly paid workforces undermined the living standards of their fellows. Some existing members sought temporary relief, campaigning for a moratorium on the right of the newcomers to seek work in competition with them; but not Britain, which was then surprised by the numbers entering the UK.
So on the one hand the EU didn’t need to become a superstate to prevent Franco-German war, and on the other hand its territorial acquisitions have imported some of the economic destabilization from which it could have protected Western Europe.
As though there wasn’t enough to do, combating globalism. Sir James Goldsmith warned of the social consequences of untrammelled “free trade” back in 1994; and what he said has come true. Our budgets are out of kilter, our workforces are “just about managing” and resentful. Debts grow; the system is creaking; industries are failing – goodbye now, British Steel.
Yet even Mrs Thatcher was supportive of the system at first; it was sort of all right so long as one was firm with one’s European partners. Yes, we bled billions every year in our trade imbalance with the Continent; yes, our miners, smelters, farmers, fishers, factories paid the price; but what with North Sea Oil, Mrs T’s supply side reforms, her Chancellor’s monetary expansion and the profits of the City’s financiers, the country could keep going.
In fact, if the Community had stayed as it was in 1983, we might never have had our second Referendum and if we had, Remainers might have won hands down. For up to that point most matters were handled on an intergovernmental basis, without mooting the need for an overarching Power dictating everything.
But in the Eighties, the Italian Communist Artiero Spinelli pushed for the resumption of the EU’s journey to single nationhood, and we see the fires of that enthusiasm in the eyes of Guy Verhofstadt and other True Believers. The normal objectives were forgotten in an Ahab-like obsessive quest for a White Whale: supranationalism.
Danger
Verhofstadt has now used the word “Empire”. The EU wants to become one. It wants to be like Russia, China, the US – all countries that M. Macron named (obscenely using Verdun and the centenary of the Armistice) as the EU’s potential future military opponents.
It wants to be big. It wants to be mighty. It wants an Army, an air force, an aircraft carrier; it wants nuclear weapons. It wants to help African countries in their internal conflicts; it wants to “restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity” while Russia holds the Eastern part and the US arms and trains Ukrainian forces.
It wants everything that Jean Monnet gave his life’s work to prevent.
It wants what could lead to war.
Peace
Jean Monnet laboured over decades to achieve it through European union: never again should there be Continental war between France and Germany.
But by the time his post-WWII project was launched, that conflict wasn’t possible in any case. Like the rest of Western Europe, France was struggling to recover from the war effort, while Germany was divided and occupied by the Communists on one side, and British and American armed forces on the other.
Again today, even after German reunification, it’s not going to happen. The nations of the Common Market have bound themselves together with Lilliputian threads. As North and Booker show, the Common Agricultural Policy saved France from Left revolt by subsiding its small farmers during reforms to their sector, and since January’s Aachen Treaty the two nations are committed to regular biannual joint Parliaments to tackle joint problems.
Trade
As well as easing inter-member trading, the Community was also a bulwark against globalism, using its joint external tariffs to guard against cheap-production Far Eastern economies.
That is, until its mania for expansion took hold, and other countries were absorbed, whose poorly paid workforces undermined the living standards of their fellows. Some existing members sought temporary relief, campaigning for a moratorium on the right of the newcomers to seek work in competition with them; but not Britain, which was then surprised by the numbers entering the UK.
So on the one hand the EU didn’t need to become a superstate to prevent Franco-German war, and on the other hand its territorial acquisitions have imported some of the economic destabilization from which it could have protected Western Europe.
As though there wasn’t enough to do, combating globalism. Sir James Goldsmith warned of the social consequences of untrammelled “free trade” back in 1994; and what he said has come true. Our budgets are out of kilter, our workforces are “just about managing” and resentful. Debts grow; the system is creaking; industries are failing – goodbye now, British Steel.
Yet even Mrs Thatcher was supportive of the system at first; it was sort of all right so long as one was firm with one’s European partners. Yes, we bled billions every year in our trade imbalance with the Continent; yes, our miners, smelters, farmers, fishers, factories paid the price; but what with North Sea Oil, Mrs T’s supply side reforms, her Chancellor’s monetary expansion and the profits of the City’s financiers, the country could keep going.
In fact, if the Community had stayed as it was in 1983, we might never have had our second Referendum and if we had, Remainers might have won hands down. For up to that point most matters were handled on an intergovernmental basis, without mooting the need for an overarching Power dictating everything.
But in the Eighties, the Italian Communist Artiero Spinelli pushed for the resumption of the EU’s journey to single nationhood, and we see the fires of that enthusiasm in the eyes of Guy Verhofstadt and other True Believers. The normal objectives were forgotten in an Ahab-like obsessive quest for a White Whale: supranationalism.
Danger
Verhofstadt has now used the word “Empire”. The EU wants to become one. It wants to be like Russia, China, the US – all countries that M. Macron named (obscenely using Verdun and the centenary of the Armistice) as the EU’s potential future military opponents.
It wants to be big. It wants to be mighty. It wants an Army, an air force, an aircraft carrier; it wants nuclear weapons. It wants to help African countries in their internal conflicts; it wants to “restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity” while Russia holds the Eastern part and the US arms and trains Ukrainian forces.
It wants everything that Jean Monnet gave his life’s work to prevent.
It wants what could lead to war.
Friday, May 24, 2019
FRIDAY MUSIC: After the Tempest, by JD
Politicians are currently running around like headless chickens (is that one of the requirements for selection I wonder?) and it is all the fault of Brexit, allegedly. If news reports are to be believed the populace appears to be in a state of suppressed rage at the infantile invincible ignorance of Whitehall and Westminster. It looks as though we need another 'Keep calm and carry on' musical selection to take our minds off their insanity just like the last time -
https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2016/07/friday-night-is-music-night-smooth.html
https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2017/02/friday-night-is-music-night-musical.html
So Keep Calm and Carry On and remember that nothing lasts forever and 'this too shall pass'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_too_shall_pass
"Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again."
William Shakespeare - The Tempest
https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2016/07/friday-night-is-music-night-smooth.html
https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2017/02/friday-night-is-music-night-musical.html
So Keep Calm and Carry On and remember that nothing lasts forever and 'this too shall pass'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_too_shall_pass
"Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again."
William Shakespeare - The Tempest
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