The European Union (EU) is a supranational and intergovernmental union of twenty-seven states and a political body. It was established in 1992 by the Treaty on European Union (The Maastricht Treaty), and is the de facto successor to the six-member European Economic Community founded in 1957. Since then new accessions have raised its number of member states, and competences have expanded.
The EU is one of the largest economic and political entities in the world, with a total population of 494 million and a combined nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of €11.6 (US$15.6) trillion in 2006.[1] The Union is a single market with a common trade policy,[2] a Common Agricultural/Fisheries Policy, and a Regional policy to assist underdeveloped regions.[3] It introduced a single currency, the euro, adopted by 13 member states. The EU initiated a limited Common Foreign and Security Policy, and a limited Police and Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters.
Important EU institutions and bodies include the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Council, the European Central Bank, the European Court of Justice, and the European Parliament. Citizens of EU member states are also EU citizens: they directly elect the European Parliament, once every five years. They can invest, live, travel, and work in other member states (with some temporary restrictions on new member states[4]). Passport control and customs checks at most internal borders were abolished by the Schengen Agreement.
Europe is one of the seven traditional continents of the Earth. Physically and geologically, Europe is the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, west of Asia. Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Sea, to the southeast by the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea and the waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. To the east, Europe is generally divided from Asia by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, and by the Caspian Sea.
Europe is the world's second-smallest continent in terms of area, covering about 10,180,000 square kilometres (3,930,000 sq mi) or 2.0% of the Earth's surface. The only continent smaller than Europe is Australia. In terms of population, it is the third-largest continent (after Asia and Africa) with a population of 710,000,000 or about 11% of the world's population. However, the term continent can refer to a cultural and political distinction or a physiographic one, leading to various perspectives about Europe's precise borders, area, and population. Russia is Europe's largest country by area and population. Europe is the birthplace of the European Union, a union of twenty-seven independent states based on the European Communities and founded to enhance political, economic and social co-operation and integration.
Pope Pius XII (Latin: Pius PP. XII), born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (March 2, 1876 – October 9, 1958), reigned as the 260th pope, the head of the Roman Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from March 2, 1939 until his death.
Before election to the papacy, Pacelli served as secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, papal nuncio and cardinal secretary of state, in which roles he worked to conclude treaties with European nations, most notably the Reichskonkordat with Germany. After World War II, he was a vocal supporter of lenient policies toward vanquished nations and a staunch opponent of communism. His leadership of the Catholic Church during World War II and The Holocaust remains the subject of continued historical controversy.
One of the "Founding Fathers" of a Supranational Europe was Robert Schuman,a Luxembourg born ex Nazi prisoner and politician for France in 1948.
les of Nato's Article 5 were also repeated in the European Defence Community Treaty which failed as the French National Assembly declined to vote its ratification. Schuman was a proponent of an Atlantic Community. This was strongly resisted by Communists, ultranationalists and Gaullists.
Schuman later served as Minister of Justice and first President of the European Parliamentary Assembly which bestowed on him by acclamation the title 'Father of Europe'. In 1958 he received the Karlspreis, an Award by the German city of Aachen to people who contributed to the European idea and European peace, commemorating Charlemagne, ruler of what is today France and Germany, who resided and is buried at Aachen. He was also a knight of the Order of Pope Pius IX.
Celibate, modest and un-ostentatious, Schuman was an intensely religious man and Bible scholar. He was strongly influenced by the writings of Pope Pius XII, St. Thomas Aquinas and Jacques Maritain. It was announced on 15 May 2004 that the diocesan investigation of the cause of beatification would soon conclude; this might have as its result that Schuman will be declared "Blessed" by the Roman Catholic Church.
Pius is one of few popes in recent history to exercise his papal infallibility by issuing an apostolic constitution, Munificentissimus Deus, which defines ex cathedra the dogma of the Assumption of Mary. He also promulgated forty-six encyclicals, including Humani Generis, which is still relevant to the Church's position on evolution. He also decisively eliminated the Italian majority in the College of Cardinals with the Grand Consistory in 1946. Most sedevacantists regard Pope Pius XII as the last true Pope to occupy the Holy See. His ongoing canonization process progressed to the venerable stage on September 2, 2000 under Pope John Paul II.
Another founding father of the European Suprastate was Konrad Adenauer.
As a devout Roman Catholic, he joined the Centre Party in 1906 and was elected to Cologne's city council in the same year. In 1909, he became Vice-Mayor of Cologne. From 1917 to 1933, he served as Mayor of Cologne. He had the unpleasant task of heading Cologne in the era of British occupation following the First World War and lasting until 1926. He managed to establish faithful relations with the British military authorities and flirted with Rhenish separatism (a Rhenish state as part of Germany, but outside Prussia). During the Weimar Republic, he was president of the Prussian State Council (Preußischer Staatsrat) from 1922 to 1933, which was the representative of the Prussian cities and provinces.
When the Nazis rose to power in 1933, the Centre Party lost the "elections" in Cologne and Adenauer fled to the abbey of Maria Laach, threatened by the new government after he had refused even to shake hands with a local Nazi leader. The hosting of Adenauer for a year at this abbey was cited by its abbot after the war, when accused by Heinrich Boll and others of collaboration with the Nazis.
He was imprisoned briefly after the Night of the Long Knives. During the next two years, he changed residences often due to reprisals inflicted on him by the Nazis. In 1937, he was successful in claiming at least some compensation for his once confiscated house and managed to live in seclusion for some years.
According to Albert Speer in his Spandau: The Secret Diaries, Hitler expressed admiration for Adenauer, noting his building of a road circling the city as a bypass, and of a "green belt" of parks. However, both Hitler and Speer felt that due to Adenauer's principal political views and general stubbornness, he couldn’t possibly play any role within their movement nor be helpful to the Nazi party in any way.
After the failed assassination attempt on Hitler, in 1944, he was imprisoned for the second time, being known as an opponent of the regime. But no active role in the plot could be connected to him by the Gestapo and he was released some weeks later. Shortly after the war, the Americans installed him again as Mayor of Cologne, but the British administration dismissed him for his alleged incompetence.
Adenauer's achievements include the establishment of a stable democracy in defeated Germany, a lasting reconciliation with France, a general political reorientation towards the West, recovering limited but far-reaching sovereignty for West Germany by firmly integrating it with the emerging Euro-Atlantic community (NATO and the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation). Adenauer is also associated with establishing an efficient pension system, which ensured an unparallelled prosperity for retired persons, and - along with his Minister for Economic Affairs and successor, Ludwig Erhard - with the West German model of a "social market economy" (a mixed economy with capitalism moderated by elements of social welfare and Catholic social teaching), which allowed for the boom period known as the Wirtschaftswunder ("economic miracle") and produced broad prosperity. Thus Adenauer ensured a truly free and democratic society which had been almost unknown to the German people before - notwithstanding that more or less hopeless attempt between 1919 and 1933 (the Weimar Republic) - and which is today not just normal but also deeply integrated into modern German society. He thereby laid the ground for the western world to trust Germany again in spite of all the horrible crimes that had been committed in Germany's name under the Nazis. Precisely because of Adenauer’s former policy a later reunification of both German states was possible, the united Germany remaining part of the European Union and the Nato.
Tony Blair will declare himself a Catholic after he leaves Downing Street, according to a leading cleric.
Father Michael Seed, who has been a spiritual confidant to Mr Blair and his family for the last six years, made the prediction to friends at a recent memorial service.
Known for bringing high-profile politicians and aristocrats into the Catholic fold, Seed said that Blair was ‘a Catholic by desire’ and that this did not necessitate a formal conversion.
There has long been speculation that Mr Blair, an Anglican, would convert to Catholicism, the faith of his wife Cherie.
Meanwhile, Downing Street refused to comment on Blair's religious intentions. A spokesman said: "This story is always circulating in one form or another.
"The Prime Minister remains a member of the Church of England."
Anglican leader the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has recently praised Blair for defending religious values and differences during his time in office.
Dr Williams paid tribute to Blair's commitment to religious freedom: "Tony Blair has understood as well as any Prime Minister in recent times why religion matters, how faith communities contribute to the common good and why religious extremism should have no place in a progressive society.
"As a man of genuine personal faith, he has not shied away from the risk associated with confronting extremism, while respecting difference."
Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Monday, 28 May 2007
Optimism among Communism
"...it is a disgrace that Europe had to wait for a word of command from the other side of the Atlantic before she realised where her own duty lay."
Dr. Henri Brugmans,Chairman of the European Union of Federalists, August 1947.
To achieve peace,freedom and an end to "all crimes and follies of the past" Winston Churchill said, "we must build a kind of United States of Europe."
Churchill renewed this message in London in 1947, at The Hague in 1948 and at Strasbourg in 1949. Churchill's world stature helped inspire the steps to create the European Union.
But the type of European Federation envisioned by Churchill and that which would become to take shape in the 1950's were distinctively different. He made this clear by his references at Zurich to the "pan-European union" worked on by the French patriot Aristide Briand and the "immense body which was brought into being amidst high hopes after the First World War- the League of Nations. Churchill had envisioned an internationalist idealism for Europe from the 1920's based on an alliance of sovereign states.
Conversely it was this type of "intergovernmentalism" which the founders of what was to be the European Union regarded as their greatest obstacle. When the project was finally launched ,the man chiefly responsible was openly dismissive of Churchill's type of "United Europe". Monnet was convinced that the goal could only be teached in a wholly different way.
Churchill had clarified in Zurich and later that any "United Europe" was a rooted partnership between Germany and France. There was no question of direct participation with Britain. "The British Empire and Commonwealth" were to remain separate.
All the essential ideas of the European Union had come into being from essential ideas made in the 1920's , before the rise of Hitler, as a way to prevent a recurrence of a First World War. In that sense they failed.
Chiefly, since the ideas were disinterred after 1945 the political balance of Europe had changed the world out of recognition. The internal fighting between France and Germany paled into significance against "an iron curtain descended across the Continent",in that respect Europe's national enmities were specifically addressed to solving a problem which no longer existed.
The end of World War Two was to act as a spur to scheme more international co-operation than the end of the Great War 25 years earlier. Many of the international institutions which were to provide a framework for the post-war world were called into being at this time. Foremost among them was the United Nations, set up in 1945 to replace the League of Nations(which was only formally dissolvedin 1946). The first UN General Assembly was held in London in January 1946 under the presidency of Belgium's foreign minister Paul-Henri Spaak. From the Bretton Woods conference of 1944, as instruments of post-war financial and economic reconstruction, came the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In October 1947, indirectly through the UN, came the signing of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs designed to work for the progressive liberalisation of World Trade. All these were intergovernmental structures based on co-operation between sovereign governments. As with the League of Nations before them, their prime mover,closely supported by Britain, was the United States of America. Americans would not again retreat into isolationism. The US firmly committed to playing a central role symbolised by the new HQ was positioned in New York and not in Switzerland.
US isolationism was impossible because of the post Second world war re-shaping of power. Leading Western European nations had their imperial possessions scattered across every continent.But the US and USSR had become superpowers with two potentially deadly conflicting political idealogies.
Far from being the centre of world politics, Europe was to become the reservoir in which the two new superpowers would act out their greater rivalry.
The division of Europe was to become deeper. In 1944 the Moscow conference had agreed that most of central and Eastern Europe ,from being liberated from Nazi occupation by the Red Army, would fall after the war into "the Soviet sphere of influence".
Pre-war democracies ended after hostilities including Czechoslovakia,Poland, Hungary and Romania who then re-established democratic, multiparty forms of government. Although under the shadow of Soviet occupation,the full political ambitions of the Communists were not yet obvious. Yugoslavia came under one-party Communist rule by Tito,then still Stalin's ally. Albania followed suit, and played an active role in promoting an attempted Communist take-over of Greece only narrowly averted by Britain's armed intervention in the Greek civil war of 1944-1945.
However, there was still grounds for optimism to re-establish self-governing institutions in all those occupied countries that had been liberated by the Western Allies; despite the presence in Italy and France of large Communist parties, which were to provide a constant reminder of how fragile the re-born democracies of Western Europe might prove if economic recovery was not successful.
Dr. Henri Brugmans,Chairman of the European Union of Federalists, August 1947.
To achieve peace,freedom and an end to "all crimes and follies of the past" Winston Churchill said, "we must build a kind of United States of Europe."
Churchill renewed this message in London in 1947, at The Hague in 1948 and at Strasbourg in 1949. Churchill's world stature helped inspire the steps to create the European Union.
But the type of European Federation envisioned by Churchill and that which would become to take shape in the 1950's were distinctively different. He made this clear by his references at Zurich to the "pan-European union" worked on by the French patriot Aristide Briand and the "immense body which was brought into being amidst high hopes after the First World War- the League of Nations. Churchill had envisioned an internationalist idealism for Europe from the 1920's based on an alliance of sovereign states.
Conversely it was this type of "intergovernmentalism" which the founders of what was to be the European Union regarded as their greatest obstacle. When the project was finally launched ,the man chiefly responsible was openly dismissive of Churchill's type of "United Europe". Monnet was convinced that the goal could only be teached in a wholly different way.
Churchill had clarified in Zurich and later that any "United Europe" was a rooted partnership between Germany and France. There was no question of direct participation with Britain. "The British Empire and Commonwealth" were to remain separate.
All the essential ideas of the European Union had come into being from essential ideas made in the 1920's , before the rise of Hitler, as a way to prevent a recurrence of a First World War. In that sense they failed.
Chiefly, since the ideas were disinterred after 1945 the political balance of Europe had changed the world out of recognition. The internal fighting between France and Germany paled into significance against "an iron curtain descended across the Continent",in that respect Europe's national enmities were specifically addressed to solving a problem which no longer existed.
The end of World War Two was to act as a spur to scheme more international co-operation than the end of the Great War 25 years earlier. Many of the international institutions which were to provide a framework for the post-war world were called into being at this time. Foremost among them was the United Nations, set up in 1945 to replace the League of Nations(which was only formally dissolvedin 1946). The first UN General Assembly was held in London in January 1946 under the presidency of Belgium's foreign minister Paul-Henri Spaak. From the Bretton Woods conference of 1944, as instruments of post-war financial and economic reconstruction, came the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In October 1947, indirectly through the UN, came the signing of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs designed to work for the progressive liberalisation of World Trade. All these were intergovernmental structures based on co-operation between sovereign governments. As with the League of Nations before them, their prime mover,closely supported by Britain, was the United States of America. Americans would not again retreat into isolationism. The US firmly committed to playing a central role symbolised by the new HQ was positioned in New York and not in Switzerland.
US isolationism was impossible because of the post Second world war re-shaping of power. Leading Western European nations had their imperial possessions scattered across every continent.But the US and USSR had become superpowers with two potentially deadly conflicting political idealogies.
Far from being the centre of world politics, Europe was to become the reservoir in which the two new superpowers would act out their greater rivalry.
The division of Europe was to become deeper. In 1944 the Moscow conference had agreed that most of central and Eastern Europe ,from being liberated from Nazi occupation by the Red Army, would fall after the war into "the Soviet sphere of influence".
Pre-war democracies ended after hostilities including Czechoslovakia,Poland, Hungary and Romania who then re-established democratic, multiparty forms of government. Although under the shadow of Soviet occupation,the full political ambitions of the Communists were not yet obvious. Yugoslavia came under one-party Communist rule by Tito,then still Stalin's ally. Albania followed suit, and played an active role in promoting an attempted Communist take-over of Greece only narrowly averted by Britain's armed intervention in the Greek civil war of 1944-1945.
However, there was still grounds for optimism to re-establish self-governing institutions in all those occupied countries that had been liberated by the Western Allies; despite the presence in Italy and France of large Communist parties, which were to provide a constant reminder of how fragile the re-born democracies of Western Europe might prove if economic recovery was not successful.
Friday, 25 May 2007
Early opposition to the European Supra State
Two fascist opposers to the "New Europe" early in 1941 were Mussolini's finance minister Alberto de Stefani and Camillo Pellizzi, editor of the magazine "Civilita Fascista". De Stefani wrote, " ...Nationalities do not form a sound basis for the planned new order...A European Union could not be subject to the variations of internal policy that are characteristic of liberal regimes.
But many advocates since the 1920's of the cause of European unity in occupied countries believed themselves that working with the Nazis was a way to achieve it. The list included Benoist Mechin, secretary of State for Franco-German relations and a Vichyite, the writer and philosopher Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. The Belge leader of the Fascist Rexist movement wrote a tract, Europe for the Europeans in which he saw Nazi Europe not as a political entity but as a bastion against Communism. The Norwegian collaborationist leader, Vidkun Quisling argued that Europe would only be strong and peaceful if united. He wanted to see a Pan-Germanic Federation with a federal flag and the Fuhrer as president. Nothing in the birth of Europe illuminati provided any practical model for the type of political integration that was to emerge after the war.
As one historian commented, " Such pan- European illusions were actively fostered by the Nazis themselves. Clearly the bulk of Third Reich statements relating to pan-Europeanism disseminated by the Nazis in the occupied territories can be dismissed as cynical propaganda calculated to encourage, if not the active co-operation, then the passive acquiescence of the new vassals. Neither Hitler,nor many of his leading hierarchs such as Goebbels, had the slightest intention to compromise absolute German hegemony through the creation of a European confederation, "subsidiary" or otherwise."
The Nazis did not supply "European Integration" as it was to spill over in the post war years. Nazi thinking was an ideological cul-de-sac.
While Nazis occupied Europe during the war, the dreams of European Unity went underground. In each occupied country, resistance movements emerged. If this movement as a whole had any unifying philosophy, it was a determination to seek a new beginning in the post-war reconstruction of Europe. This then was the concept of a United Europe. In common with the pre-war "Pan Europeanists" (and that of the Nazis when it suited them), they held nationalism and national pride to be responsible for past European wars. The prevailing ethos supported the creation of new structures to transcend historical boundaries. This much was openly declared, long before the end of the war, by resistance groups all over Europe including Germany itself.
But the most strident supporters of European unity were the Italian Communists, who were at the core of the anti-Fascist movement.
So came of this, a major figure to contribute to the development of the European Union, the Italian, Altiero Spinelli. Born in 1907 he was a Communist at the age of 17 and had been active in opposing Mussolini's fascism. In 1928 he was arrested and imprisoned, spending 12 years in jai before eventually being sent to a prison on the Mediterranean island of Ventonene, 30 miles west of Naples.
In prison he broke with Communism and embraced the cause of European unity. With the help of a fellow prisoner, Ernesto Rossi, he composed what became known as the "Ventonen Manifesto" under the title Towards a free and United Europe. This was to become one of the basic texts of European Federalism. The co-author was a friend of the liberal economist,Luigi Einaudi.
Spinelli considered the future Europe to be plunging into chaos,exploiting this to secure the "definitive abolition of the division of Europe into national,sovereign states. In order to achieve this he called on his followers to foment revolution. True to his political ideology he proclaimed, "the European revolution must be socialist.
Spinelli had in mind an all powerful,supra national authority. He saw this developing into a "United States of Europe" with its own constitution and armed forces. It would have the power to ensure that its "deliberations for the maintenance of common order are executed in the individual federal states."
He stated," During revolutionary times, when institutions are not simply to be administered but created," he insisted," democratic procedures fail miserably."
A passage describes Spinelli's model of "European Federation" from his manifesto;
"During the revolutionary crisis, this movement will have the task of organising and guiding progressive forces,using all the popular bodies which form spontaneously...waiting to be guided. It derives its vision and certainty of what must be done from the knowledge that it the deepest needs of modern society and not from any previous recognition by popular will, as yet non-existent.In this way it issues the basic guidelines of the new order..By this dictatorship of the revolutionary party a new State will be formed, and around this State new, genuine democracy will grow."
In other words, "the people" were not to be involved in the process of constructing the new state. Popular assent would only be sought when the project was all but complete. At that moment their "crowning dream" would be the calling of a "constituent assembly" to "decide upon the constitution they want". The drawing up of the constitution would be the final act in the emergence of the "United States of Europe"
In 1941 Spinell's manifesto was smuggled to the mainland from prison. His idea came to be adopted by the Communist-dominated Italian Resistance as a whole, leading to the formation in 1943 of the European Federalist Movement. This spread the message to other groups in other countries giving rise to a series of meetings in neutral Switzerland, culminating in a major conference in Geneva in July 1944, attended by activists from all over Europe. At Geneva, the assembled representatives produced their Draft Declaration of the European Resistance Movement, largely drafted by Spinelli who had by now been released from prison.
The life of people in the post-war world,it was agreed, must be based on "the respect of the human individual,on security, on social justice, on the complete utilisation of economic resources for the benefit of the whole, and on the autonomous development of national life."
These aims,it was considered "cannot be fulfilled unless the different countries of the world agree to go beyond the dogma of the absolute sovereignty of the state and unite in a single federal organisation." The draft declared a worldwide organisation could not be achieved immediately,so in the immediate post-war period, "the European problem must be given a more direct and more radical solution."
This "direct solution" would consist of a European "Federal Union". It would control its own army, no national armies would be allowed. It would also have its own court, with sole jurisdiction over constitutional matters and exclusive rights to arbitrate in conflicts between the central authority and member states.
It was another 40 years before Spinelli would make his central contribution to the shape of the European Union as it finally emerged. But the ideals on which this was based were all there in the declaration of 1944, originating from the few pages he had scribbled in his island prison, at a time when Hitler's "Thousand Year Reich" had seemed the undisputed master of Europe.
But many advocates since the 1920's of the cause of European unity in occupied countries believed themselves that working with the Nazis was a way to achieve it. The list included Benoist Mechin, secretary of State for Franco-German relations and a Vichyite, the writer and philosopher Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. The Belge leader of the Fascist Rexist movement wrote a tract, Europe for the Europeans in which he saw Nazi Europe not as a political entity but as a bastion against Communism. The Norwegian collaborationist leader, Vidkun Quisling argued that Europe would only be strong and peaceful if united. He wanted to see a Pan-Germanic Federation with a federal flag and the Fuhrer as president. Nothing in the birth of Europe illuminati provided any practical model for the type of political integration that was to emerge after the war.
As one historian commented, " Such pan- European illusions were actively fostered by the Nazis themselves. Clearly the bulk of Third Reich statements relating to pan-Europeanism disseminated by the Nazis in the occupied territories can be dismissed as cynical propaganda calculated to encourage, if not the active co-operation, then the passive acquiescence of the new vassals. Neither Hitler,nor many of his leading hierarchs such as Goebbels, had the slightest intention to compromise absolute German hegemony through the creation of a European confederation, "subsidiary" or otherwise."
The Nazis did not supply "European Integration" as it was to spill over in the post war years. Nazi thinking was an ideological cul-de-sac.
While Nazis occupied Europe during the war, the dreams of European Unity went underground. In each occupied country, resistance movements emerged. If this movement as a whole had any unifying philosophy, it was a determination to seek a new beginning in the post-war reconstruction of Europe. This then was the concept of a United Europe. In common with the pre-war "Pan Europeanists" (and that of the Nazis when it suited them), they held nationalism and national pride to be responsible for past European wars. The prevailing ethos supported the creation of new structures to transcend historical boundaries. This much was openly declared, long before the end of the war, by resistance groups all over Europe including Germany itself.
But the most strident supporters of European unity were the Italian Communists, who were at the core of the anti-Fascist movement.
So came of this, a major figure to contribute to the development of the European Union, the Italian, Altiero Spinelli. Born in 1907 he was a Communist at the age of 17 and had been active in opposing Mussolini's fascism. In 1928 he was arrested and imprisoned, spending 12 years in jai before eventually being sent to a prison on the Mediterranean island of Ventonene, 30 miles west of Naples.
In prison he broke with Communism and embraced the cause of European unity. With the help of a fellow prisoner, Ernesto Rossi, he composed what became known as the "Ventonen Manifesto" under the title Towards a free and United Europe. This was to become one of the basic texts of European Federalism. The co-author was a friend of the liberal economist,Luigi Einaudi.
Spinelli considered the future Europe to be plunging into chaos,exploiting this to secure the "definitive abolition of the division of Europe into national,sovereign states. In order to achieve this he called on his followers to foment revolution. True to his political ideology he proclaimed, "the European revolution must be socialist.
Spinelli had in mind an all powerful,supra national authority. He saw this developing into a "United States of Europe" with its own constitution and armed forces. It would have the power to ensure that its "deliberations for the maintenance of common order are executed in the individual federal states."
He stated," During revolutionary times, when institutions are not simply to be administered but created," he insisted," democratic procedures fail miserably."
A passage describes Spinelli's model of "European Federation" from his manifesto;
"During the revolutionary crisis, this movement will have the task of organising and guiding progressive forces,using all the popular bodies which form spontaneously...waiting to be guided. It derives its vision and certainty of what must be done from the knowledge that it the deepest needs of modern society and not from any previous recognition by popular will, as yet non-existent.In this way it issues the basic guidelines of the new order..By this dictatorship of the revolutionary party a new State will be formed, and around this State new, genuine democracy will grow."
In other words, "the people" were not to be involved in the process of constructing the new state. Popular assent would only be sought when the project was all but complete. At that moment their "crowning dream" would be the calling of a "constituent assembly" to "decide upon the constitution they want". The drawing up of the constitution would be the final act in the emergence of the "United States of Europe"
In 1941 Spinell's manifesto was smuggled to the mainland from prison. His idea came to be adopted by the Communist-dominated Italian Resistance as a whole, leading to the formation in 1943 of the European Federalist Movement. This spread the message to other groups in other countries giving rise to a series of meetings in neutral Switzerland, culminating in a major conference in Geneva in July 1944, attended by activists from all over Europe. At Geneva, the assembled representatives produced their Draft Declaration of the European Resistance Movement, largely drafted by Spinelli who had by now been released from prison.
The life of people in the post-war world,it was agreed, must be based on "the respect of the human individual,on security, on social justice, on the complete utilisation of economic resources for the benefit of the whole, and on the autonomous development of national life."
These aims,it was considered "cannot be fulfilled unless the different countries of the world agree to go beyond the dogma of the absolute sovereignty of the state and unite in a single federal organisation." The draft declared a worldwide organisation could not be achieved immediately,so in the immediate post-war period, "the European problem must be given a more direct and more radical solution."
This "direct solution" would consist of a European "Federal Union". It would control its own army, no national armies would be allowed. It would also have its own court, with sole jurisdiction over constitutional matters and exclusive rights to arbitrate in conflicts between the central authority and member states.
It was another 40 years before Spinelli would make his central contribution to the shape of the European Union as it finally emerged. But the ideals on which this was based were all there in the declaration of 1944, originating from the few pages he had scribbled in his island prison, at a time when Hitler's "Thousand Year Reich" had seemed the undisputed master of Europe.
Thursday, 24 May 2007
"Fortress Europe"
Salter never gave up hope of his plans for a European steel and coal union. During a meeting in Washington in 1941 he met Paul-Henri Spaak, the pre-war prime minister of Belgium. It marked the beginning of a personal alliance with a dream of a united Europe that was to become extremely influential in the forming of post-war Europe.
As the tide of war swung to the Allies favour, Monnet's attention turned more and more to the shape of a Europe he wished to see emerge in the post-war era.
At the end of February 1943 after the Allies had retaken French North Africa, Monnet was sent to Algiers to arrange for arms shipments to the French Free Forces. Here Monnet formed a close alliance with the politician sent out by Churchill, Harold Macmillan. They had extensive talks about the future of France and post-war Europe, and agreed that, as high-handed as he was De Gaulle was a man of sufficient stature to lead a government in exile.
They laid down there the foundations of a provisional French government, the Comite Francais de Liberation Nationale (CFLN), to be led by de Gaulle. In their first meeting they produced a memorandum which declared:
"There will be no peace in Europe, if the states are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty with all that implies in terms of prestige politics and economic protectionism. If the nations of Europe adopt defensive positions again, huge armies will be necessary again. Under the future peace treaty, some nations will be allowed to re-arm; others will not. That was tried in 1919;we all know the result..
The nations of Europe are too circumscribed to give their peoples the prosperity made possible, and hence necessary, by modern conditions. They will need larger markets. And they will have to refrain from using a major proportion of their resources to maintain "key" industries needed for national defence...
Prosperity and vital social progress wil remain elusive until the nations of Europe form a federation of a "European entity" which will forge them into a single economic unit..Our concern is a solution to the European problem. The British, the Americans, the Russians ahve worlds of their own into which they can temporarily retreat. France cannot opt out, for her very existence hinges on a solution to the European problem..."
This vision was being developed by Monnet in which European peace could only be maintained if Europe was organised by a supranational authority sufficient to overrule the fractious impulses of national sovereignty. This would forge the member states into a "single economic unit", based on integrating those "key industries needed for national defence", such as coal and steel. Moreover, despite his earlier attempts at Anlgo-French union, it would also be a Europe where no direct involvement of Britain would be involved than that of America or Russia.
In 1942 Europe was politically united. In Hitler's "Fortress Europe", the Fuhrer dismissed European unity as a "presumptious irrelevance". He loathed the early European movement and banned all "European Unity" associations as soon as he had had the chance.
But downscale in the Nazi hierarchy some spent the war years conceiving plans for a federal European unity. Werner Daitz, a leading Nazi economist launched a society for the European Economic Planning and Macroeconomics (Grossraumwirtschaft) and produced a book, "What the New Order in Europe Brings to the European Peoples." His ideologue added to many of the time that attacked "outmoded" notions of national sovereignty and the nation state.
In 1938 Daitz had declared that the idea of the state derived from British political theory and the French Revolution. He held the nation to be small and selfish compared to the "great common undertaking" which was Europe.
Another enthusiast for unity was Hitler's foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. In late 1942 he headed a Committee on the Restructuring of Europe, giving a number of academics and politicians free reign to discuss the creation of Europe's future.
The Nazi finance minister, Walther Funk, also held "common interests" had to take precedence over particular ones. He reconstructed the post-war economy within the framework of a "New European Order" and a new world economy.
With Germany in occupied lands and charging the occupied lands for it, Goebbels remarked, "It is only right and just that we take the leadership of Europe into our own hands..The German people...have actually won the hegemony of Europe and have a moral right to it."
Goebbels then recognised that the rhetoric of "Europeanism" could serve a useful propaganda purpose. With the tide of war, he projected Germany as the protector of "European" culture against the barbarians from the east. This sought to encourage occupied countries to "volunteer" their young men to join the Waffen-SS and to mobilise their economies against the Bolshevik hordes in what was increasingly styled a "European war of liberation."
The propaganda had its effect. 50,000 non-Germans from every part of occupied Europe fought on the Eastern front, under the bannerof the Waffen-SS. Many believed they were defending "Europe" rather than serving the interests of Germany.
The disparaging persistent theme from the many disparate themes though, was still one to proclaim the end to the nation state and it's absorption into a greater European identity; and that the emerging "New Europe" could now recover its old self-confidence and compete with any power in the world.
As the tide of war swung to the Allies favour, Monnet's attention turned more and more to the shape of a Europe he wished to see emerge in the post-war era.
At the end of February 1943 after the Allies had retaken French North Africa, Monnet was sent to Algiers to arrange for arms shipments to the French Free Forces. Here Monnet formed a close alliance with the politician sent out by Churchill, Harold Macmillan. They had extensive talks about the future of France and post-war Europe, and agreed that, as high-handed as he was De Gaulle was a man of sufficient stature to lead a government in exile.
They laid down there the foundations of a provisional French government, the Comite Francais de Liberation Nationale (CFLN), to be led by de Gaulle. In their first meeting they produced a memorandum which declared:
"There will be no peace in Europe, if the states are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty with all that implies in terms of prestige politics and economic protectionism. If the nations of Europe adopt defensive positions again, huge armies will be necessary again. Under the future peace treaty, some nations will be allowed to re-arm; others will not. That was tried in 1919;we all know the result..
The nations of Europe are too circumscribed to give their peoples the prosperity made possible, and hence necessary, by modern conditions. They will need larger markets. And they will have to refrain from using a major proportion of their resources to maintain "key" industries needed for national defence...
Prosperity and vital social progress wil remain elusive until the nations of Europe form a federation of a "European entity" which will forge them into a single economic unit..Our concern is a solution to the European problem. The British, the Americans, the Russians ahve worlds of their own into which they can temporarily retreat. France cannot opt out, for her very existence hinges on a solution to the European problem..."
This vision was being developed by Monnet in which European peace could only be maintained if Europe was organised by a supranational authority sufficient to overrule the fractious impulses of national sovereignty. This would forge the member states into a "single economic unit", based on integrating those "key industries needed for national defence", such as coal and steel. Moreover, despite his earlier attempts at Anlgo-French union, it would also be a Europe where no direct involvement of Britain would be involved than that of America or Russia.
In 1942 Europe was politically united. In Hitler's "Fortress Europe", the Fuhrer dismissed European unity as a "presumptious irrelevance". He loathed the early European movement and banned all "European Unity" associations as soon as he had had the chance.
But downscale in the Nazi hierarchy some spent the war years conceiving plans for a federal European unity. Werner Daitz, a leading Nazi economist launched a society for the European Economic Planning and Macroeconomics (Grossraumwirtschaft) and produced a book, "What the New Order in Europe Brings to the European Peoples." His ideologue added to many of the time that attacked "outmoded" notions of national sovereignty and the nation state.
In 1938 Daitz had declared that the idea of the state derived from British political theory and the French Revolution. He held the nation to be small and selfish compared to the "great common undertaking" which was Europe.
Another enthusiast for unity was Hitler's foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. In late 1942 he headed a Committee on the Restructuring of Europe, giving a number of academics and politicians free reign to discuss the creation of Europe's future.
The Nazi finance minister, Walther Funk, also held "common interests" had to take precedence over particular ones. He reconstructed the post-war economy within the framework of a "New European Order" and a new world economy.
With Germany in occupied lands and charging the occupied lands for it, Goebbels remarked, "It is only right and just that we take the leadership of Europe into our own hands..The German people...have actually won the hegemony of Europe and have a moral right to it."
Goebbels then recognised that the rhetoric of "Europeanism" could serve a useful propaganda purpose. With the tide of war, he projected Germany as the protector of "European" culture against the barbarians from the east. This sought to encourage occupied countries to "volunteer" their young men to join the Waffen-SS and to mobilise their economies against the Bolshevik hordes in what was increasingly styled a "European war of liberation."
The propaganda had its effect. 50,000 non-Germans from every part of occupied Europe fought on the Eastern front, under the bannerof the Waffen-SS. Many believed they were defending "Europe" rather than serving the interests of Germany.
The disparaging persistent theme from the many disparate themes though, was still one to proclaim the end to the nation state and it's absorption into a greater European identity; and that the emerging "New Europe" could now recover its old self-confidence and compete with any power in the world.
Saturday, 19 May 2007
Jimmy Carter Traitor by Christopher Ruddy 2002.
God must have a sense of humor.
In the same month that Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a new book reveals that Carter may be guilty of treason, based on newly unearthed Soviet documents.
And just days after it was announced that Carter had won the Peace Prize, North Korea announced that it had atomic weapons and some "worse stuff."
Carter, the so-called "peacemaker," had been instrumental in the early '90s in "mediating" U.S.-Korean relations, an effort that led to Clinton policies that actually helped North Korea build and acquire these weapons.
Isn't it odd that a man who has helped so many tyrants and dictators through the years should get the Nobel Peace Prize?
We all know that the Nobel committee has long leaned toward the left, and long interpreted "peace" as a result of capitulations by the West and democracies to bullying and tyrannical dictators. So the award should not have come as a surprise.
The Nobel committee said it gave the 39th president the award "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development."
The facts show that, far from bringing peace, Carter has left a trail of disaster behind his long path.
Far from being an honest mediator, Carter has been a shameless self-promoter who also may well have committed treason to keep himself in the presidency.
Last week, "Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism" (Doubleday) by Peter Schweizer was released.
This book offers damning evidence that Jimmy Carter, as both president and citizen, may have committed treason by enlisting the help of the Soviet Union in the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections.
Schweizer combed through once-secret KGB and Communist Party files. What he discovered about Jimmy Carter is very disturbing.
Documents show, according to Schweizer, that in the closing days of the 1980 campaign, the Carter "White House dispatched Armand Hammer to the Soviet Embassy for a secret meeting with Ambassador Dobrynin."
Hammer told Dobrynin that Carter was "clearly alarmed at the way things stood in the election campaign."
Hammer asked for Soviet help, especially to help Jewish emigration, which would have helped Carter's standing in key electoral states. Hammer promised, "Carter won't forget that service if he is re-elected."
"Peacemaker" Carter was a boon to the Soviets. During his presidency, the Evil Empire reached its zenith, making bold moves in Ethiopia, Yemen, El Salvador, Grenada, Nicaragua and Afghanistan.
Carter once again sought the Soviets' help in 1984.
Carter was out of office then, but he still felt the need to visit Ambassador Dobrynin at his Washington home.
According to the Soviet document, Carter came to complain about Reagan and his defense buildup.
Carter told Dobrynin that if the Soviets didn't do something about Reagan, "there would not be a single agreement on arms control, especially on nuclear arms, as long as Reagan remained in power."
Carter's intention was clear. He wanted the Russians to intervene in some way to help get a Democrat back into the White House.
This new evidence questions Jimmy Carter's patriotism.
But Carter's devotion to "peace" also was demonstrated to be wrongheaded by Reagan, who indeed won the Cold War without war, and has brought an era of harsh tyranny against populations worldwide, but bloody conflicts where millions had died.
Reagan's strategy, as Schweizer shows, won the Cold War.
Still, we should not forget that we are still suffering because of Carter's decisions as president. It was Carter's refusal to assist the Shah of Iran that allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini and Islamic fundamentalists to gain power and flourish.
Ground Zero has a trail right back to the feet of Jimmy Carter in the Oval Office.
If the Nobel committee were fair, it would have awarded the peace prize to Ronald Reagan.
But that will never happen, because Reagan didn't apologize for dictators, didn't pressure democracies to cave in to dictators, and didn't accept millions of dollars from Arab sheiks and then complain about Israel's human rights record.
And unlike Carter, Reagan never kissed up to the media.
After winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Carter telephoned NBC's Katie Couric. Even she was surprised by the call. Why would Carter call her, of all people?
Carter, the shameless, self-promoting politician, knew exactly what he was doing.
Good PR from media liberals like Couric had helped cover up his record – a record that includes consorting with our former enemy.
In the same month that Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a new book reveals that Carter may be guilty of treason, based on newly unearthed Soviet documents.
And just days after it was announced that Carter had won the Peace Prize, North Korea announced that it had atomic weapons and some "worse stuff."
Carter, the so-called "peacemaker," had been instrumental in the early '90s in "mediating" U.S.-Korean relations, an effort that led to Clinton policies that actually helped North Korea build and acquire these weapons.
Isn't it odd that a man who has helped so many tyrants and dictators through the years should get the Nobel Peace Prize?
We all know that the Nobel committee has long leaned toward the left, and long interpreted "peace" as a result of capitulations by the West and democracies to bullying and tyrannical dictators. So the award should not have come as a surprise.
The Nobel committee said it gave the 39th president the award "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development."
The facts show that, far from bringing peace, Carter has left a trail of disaster behind his long path.
Far from being an honest mediator, Carter has been a shameless self-promoter who also may well have committed treason to keep himself in the presidency.
Last week, "Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism" (Doubleday) by Peter Schweizer was released.
This book offers damning evidence that Jimmy Carter, as both president and citizen, may have committed treason by enlisting the help of the Soviet Union in the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections.
Schweizer combed through once-secret KGB and Communist Party files. What he discovered about Jimmy Carter is very disturbing.
Documents show, according to Schweizer, that in the closing days of the 1980 campaign, the Carter "White House dispatched Armand Hammer to the Soviet Embassy for a secret meeting with Ambassador Dobrynin."
Hammer told Dobrynin that Carter was "clearly alarmed at the way things stood in the election campaign."
Hammer asked for Soviet help, especially to help Jewish emigration, which would have helped Carter's standing in key electoral states. Hammer promised, "Carter won't forget that service if he is re-elected."
"Peacemaker" Carter was a boon to the Soviets. During his presidency, the Evil Empire reached its zenith, making bold moves in Ethiopia, Yemen, El Salvador, Grenada, Nicaragua and Afghanistan.
Carter once again sought the Soviets' help in 1984.
Carter was out of office then, but he still felt the need to visit Ambassador Dobrynin at his Washington home.
According to the Soviet document, Carter came to complain about Reagan and his defense buildup.
Carter told Dobrynin that if the Soviets didn't do something about Reagan, "there would not be a single agreement on arms control, especially on nuclear arms, as long as Reagan remained in power."
Carter's intention was clear. He wanted the Russians to intervene in some way to help get a Democrat back into the White House.
This new evidence questions Jimmy Carter's patriotism.
But Carter's devotion to "peace" also was demonstrated to be wrongheaded by Reagan, who indeed won the Cold War without war, and has brought an era of harsh tyranny against populations worldwide, but bloody conflicts where millions had died.
Reagan's strategy, as Schweizer shows, won the Cold War.
Still, we should not forget that we are still suffering because of Carter's decisions as president. It was Carter's refusal to assist the Shah of Iran that allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini and Islamic fundamentalists to gain power and flourish.
Ground Zero has a trail right back to the feet of Jimmy Carter in the Oval Office.
If the Nobel committee were fair, it would have awarded the peace prize to Ronald Reagan.
But that will never happen, because Reagan didn't apologize for dictators, didn't pressure democracies to cave in to dictators, and didn't accept millions of dollars from Arab sheiks and then complain about Israel's human rights record.
And unlike Carter, Reagan never kissed up to the media.
After winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Carter telephoned NBC's Katie Couric. Even she was surprised by the call. Why would Carter call her, of all people?
Carter, the shameless, self-promoting politician, knew exactly what he was doing.
Good PR from media liberals like Couric had helped cover up his record – a record that includes consorting with our former enemy.
Thursday, 17 May 2007
The Birth of a Communist Idea 1918-1932
"Europe is being liquidated, and the League of Nations must be the heir to this great estate." 1918 (Jan Smuts)
If there was one historical event which more than any other inspired what was eventually to become the European Union, it was the battle which waged around Verdun in the First World War. For the British the defining battle was the Somme in the summer of 1916. For France and Germany it was the colossal battleof attrition launched in February the same year, when the French Commander, General Philippe Petain, pronounced that the fortresses on the hills overlooking Verdun on the River Meuse were where the advance of German armies into his country would be brought to a halt. His legendary words "Ils ne passeront pas" were endorsed the same day by France's prime minister Aristide Briand.
For nearly a year, the French and German armies battered each other to destruction in the most intense and prolonged concentration of violence the world had ever seen. French artillery alone fired more than twelve million shells, the German guns considerably more. The number of dead and wounded on both sides exceded 700,000.
The impact of this battle on France was profound. Because of the way in which her citizen soldiers were rotated through the front line,scarcely a town or village in France was untouched by the slaughter. Among the two and a half million Frenchmen who fough in the battle were France's future President Charles De Gaulle, and Louis Delors, whose son Jacques would one day be president of the European Commission. Present for several months fighting for the other side was the father of Germany's future Chancellor, Helmut Kohl.
So deep was the wound Verdun inflicted on the psyche of France that the following year her army was brought to mutiny. Its morale would never fully recover. And from this blow were to emerge two abiding lessons.
The first was a conviction that such a suicidal clash of national armies must never be repeated. The second was much more specific and immediate. It came from the realisation that the war had been shaped more than anything else by industrial power. As the battle for Verdun had developed into a remorseless artillery duel,trainloads of German shells were arriving at the front still warm from the factories of the ruhr. The battle, and the war itself, became less a trial of men and human resolve than of two rival industrial systems. And the French system had been found sorely wanting.
Particularlyy inferior had been the heavy huns, many dating back to the 1870's, able to fire shells at only a seventh of the rate of their German counterparts. More and better guns became vital. But, as France's politicians found to their consternation, manufacturing them and the huge quantities of ammunition needed was beyond the cpacity of an industry which compared equally poorly with Germany's. This had since August 1914, under the inspiration of Walter Rathenau, been put on a fully integrated war footing, under the control of a War Raw Materials Department.
In the summer of 1916 therefore, a crisis-stricken French government gave an industrialist, Louis Loucheur, near-dictatorial powers to reform and develop the manufacturing base. Before the war, Loucheur had been one of the early pioneers in the use of reinforced concrete. In a national economy dominated by artisan manufacture, he was one of the few French technocrats familiar with the techniques of mass production.
With all the power of the state behind him, Loucheur succeeded in his initial task, even building new factories to make the new guns. But improvements in production precipitated critical shortages of steel and coal, exacerbated by the German seizure in the first weeks of the war of around half France's industrial base in the north-east of the country.
Remedying these shortages required massive imports from Britain, and then from the United States. In turn this placed considerable demands on shipping. All this required unprecedented economic co-operation between the Western Allies, leading Loucheur to conclude, like Rathenau befor him, how far success in modern warfare demanded industrial organisation.
Thus, Loucheur came to reflect, industrial organisation was the key to waging war. From this he developed the idea that, if key industries from different countries, above all their coal and steel industries on which modern warfare so much depended, were removed from the control of individual nations and vested in a "higher authority", this might be the means of preserving peace.
If there was one historical event which more than any other inspired what was eventually to become the European Union, it was the battle which waged around Verdun in the First World War. For the British the defining battle was the Somme in the summer of 1916. For France and Germany it was the colossal battleof attrition launched in February the same year, when the French Commander, General Philippe Petain, pronounced that the fortresses on the hills overlooking Verdun on the River Meuse were where the advance of German armies into his country would be brought to a halt. His legendary words "Ils ne passeront pas" were endorsed the same day by France's prime minister Aristide Briand.
For nearly a year, the French and German armies battered each other to destruction in the most intense and prolonged concentration of violence the world had ever seen. French artillery alone fired more than twelve million shells, the German guns considerably more. The number of dead and wounded on both sides exceded 700,000.
The impact of this battle on France was profound. Because of the way in which her citizen soldiers were rotated through the front line,scarcely a town or village in France was untouched by the slaughter. Among the two and a half million Frenchmen who fough in the battle were France's future President Charles De Gaulle, and Louis Delors, whose son Jacques would one day be president of the European Commission. Present for several months fighting for the other side was the father of Germany's future Chancellor, Helmut Kohl.
So deep was the wound Verdun inflicted on the psyche of France that the following year her army was brought to mutiny. Its morale would never fully recover. And from this blow were to emerge two abiding lessons.
The first was a conviction that such a suicidal clash of national armies must never be repeated. The second was much more specific and immediate. It came from the realisation that the war had been shaped more than anything else by industrial power. As the battle for Verdun had developed into a remorseless artillery duel,trainloads of German shells were arriving at the front still warm from the factories of the ruhr. The battle, and the war itself, became less a trial of men and human resolve than of two rival industrial systems. And the French system had been found sorely wanting.
Particularlyy inferior had been the heavy huns, many dating back to the 1870's, able to fire shells at only a seventh of the rate of their German counterparts. More and better guns became vital. But, as France's politicians found to their consternation, manufacturing them and the huge quantities of ammunition needed was beyond the cpacity of an industry which compared equally poorly with Germany's. This had since August 1914, under the inspiration of Walter Rathenau, been put on a fully integrated war footing, under the control of a War Raw Materials Department.
In the summer of 1916 therefore, a crisis-stricken French government gave an industrialist, Louis Loucheur, near-dictatorial powers to reform and develop the manufacturing base. Before the war, Loucheur had been one of the early pioneers in the use of reinforced concrete. In a national economy dominated by artisan manufacture, he was one of the few French technocrats familiar with the techniques of mass production.
With all the power of the state behind him, Loucheur succeeded in his initial task, even building new factories to make the new guns. But improvements in production precipitated critical shortages of steel and coal, exacerbated by the German seizure in the first weeks of the war of around half France's industrial base in the north-east of the country.
Remedying these shortages required massive imports from Britain, and then from the United States. In turn this placed considerable demands on shipping. All this required unprecedented economic co-operation between the Western Allies, leading Loucheur to conclude, like Rathenau befor him, how far success in modern warfare demanded industrial organisation.
Thus, Loucheur came to reflect, industrial organisation was the key to waging war. From this he developed the idea that, if key industries from different countries, above all their coal and steel industries on which modern warfare so much depended, were removed from the control of individual nations and vested in a "higher authority", this might be the means of preserving peace.
Wednesday, 9 May 2007
Who Controls the Press?
NOT A SINGLE ANNOUNCEMENT WILL REACH THE PUBLIC WITHOUT OUR CONTROL. Even now this is already being attained by us inasmuch as all news items are received by a few agencies, in whose offices they are focused from all parts of the world. These agencies will then be already entirely ours and will give publicity only to what we dictate to them.
5. If already now we have contrived to possess ourselves of the minds of the GOY communities to such an extent that they all come near looking upon the events of the world through the colored glasses of those spectacles we are setting astride their noses; if already now there is not a single State where there exist for us any barriers to admittance into what GOY stupidity calls State secrets: what will our positions be then, when we shall be acknowledged supreme lords of the world in the person of our king of all the world ....
6. Let us turn again to the FUTURE OF THE PRINTING PRESS. Every one desirous of being a publisher, librarian, or printer, will be obliged to provide himself with the diploma instituted therefore, which, in case of any fault, will be immediately impounded. With such measures THE INSTRUMENT OF THOUGHT WILL BECOME AN EDUCATIVE MEANS ON THE HANDS OF OUR GOVERNMENT, WHICH WILL NO LONGER ALLOW THE MASS OF THE NATION TO BE LED ASTRAY IN BY-WAYS AND FANTASIES ABOUT THE BLESSINGS OF PROGRESS. Is there any one of us who does not know that these phantom blessings are the direct roads to foolish imaginings which give birth to anarchical relations of men among themselves and towards authority, because progress, or rather the idea of progress, has introduced the conception of every kind of emancipation, but has failed to establish its limits .... All the so-called liberals are anarchists, if not in fact, at any rate in thought. Every one of them in hunting after phantoms of freedom, and falling exclusively into license, that is, into the anarchy of protest for the sake of protest...
“There it is, folks. The 'We Control the Press' dictate has already been achieved. In fact, it is now axiomatic that media is a Jewish domain. Their control of our thoughts and "ways of thinking" is a foregone conclusion. When they state "If already now we have contrived to possess ourselves of the minds of the GOY communities to such an extent that they all come near looking upon the events of the world through the colored glasses of those spectacles we are setting astride their noses," we can now safely proclaim "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" for our Jewish kings, lords and masters! Most Americans see events, people, places and things through Jewish eyes and think "Jewishly" in ways that are probably more subconscious than explicit.”
5. If already now we have contrived to possess ourselves of the minds of the GOY communities to such an extent that they all come near looking upon the events of the world through the colored glasses of those spectacles we are setting astride their noses; if already now there is not a single State where there exist for us any barriers to admittance into what GOY stupidity calls State secrets: what will our positions be then, when we shall be acknowledged supreme lords of the world in the person of our king of all the world ....
6. Let us turn again to the FUTURE OF THE PRINTING PRESS. Every one desirous of being a publisher, librarian, or printer, will be obliged to provide himself with the diploma instituted therefore, which, in case of any fault, will be immediately impounded. With such measures THE INSTRUMENT OF THOUGHT WILL BECOME AN EDUCATIVE MEANS ON THE HANDS OF OUR GOVERNMENT, WHICH WILL NO LONGER ALLOW THE MASS OF THE NATION TO BE LED ASTRAY IN BY-WAYS AND FANTASIES ABOUT THE BLESSINGS OF PROGRESS. Is there any one of us who does not know that these phantom blessings are the direct roads to foolish imaginings which give birth to anarchical relations of men among themselves and towards authority, because progress, or rather the idea of progress, has introduced the conception of every kind of emancipation, but has failed to establish its limits .... All the so-called liberals are anarchists, if not in fact, at any rate in thought. Every one of them in hunting after phantoms of freedom, and falling exclusively into license, that is, into the anarchy of protest for the sake of protest...
“There it is, folks. The 'We Control the Press' dictate has already been achieved. In fact, it is now axiomatic that media is a Jewish domain. Their control of our thoughts and "ways of thinking" is a foregone conclusion. When they state "If already now we have contrived to possess ourselves of the minds of the GOY communities to such an extent that they all come near looking upon the events of the world through the colored glasses of those spectacles we are setting astride their noses," we can now safely proclaim "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" for our Jewish kings, lords and masters! Most Americans see events, people, places and things through Jewish eyes and think "Jewishly" in ways that are probably more subconscious than explicit.”
Monday, 7 May 2007
Immigration from the Civl Rights movement
n 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill that has dramatically changed the method by which immigrants are admitted to America. This bill is the Immigration Act of 1965. This act, also known as the Hart-Cellar Act [1], not only allows more individuals from third world countries to enter the US (including Asians, who have traditionally been hindered from entering America), but also entails a separate quota for refugees. [2] Under the Act, 170,000 immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere are granted residency, with no more than 20,000 per country. One hundred twenty thousand immigrants from the Western Hemisphere, with no “national limitations,” are also to be admitted. [3] The significance of this bill was that future immigrants were to be welcomed because of their skills/professions, and not for their countries of origin. Before President Johnson signed this bill, the Senate voted 76 to 18 in favor of this act, with the most opposition votes cast by Southern delegates. The House voted 326 to 69 in favor of the act. [4]
Back to "Cold War Era" Chronology
The main reason the Immigration Act was the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement was to rid America of racial/ethnic discrimination. Two other bills, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Johnson signed for the same reason. [5] The Immigration Act was therefore a corrective measure instituted to atone for past history of discrimination in immigration.
Two earlier laws reflecting this discrimination were the National Origin's Act of the 1924 and the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952. [6] Both of these granted residency on the basis of national origin, and were particularly discriminative towards Asians. For instance, under the McCarran-Walter Act, while the quota for European immigrants was 149,667, the quota for Asian immigrants was 2,990, and the African quota was 1,400. [7] The Immigration Act of 1965, therefore, shifted the focus to non-European countries, especially those of the third world. Both Johnson and President Kennedy wished that by reforming immigration law, they would not only gain auspicious international relations (especially with non-White nations), but they would also confirm America's bedrock principles of America being a free country, where everyone is considered equal. [8]
Immigrants granted residency in America are now considered for admittance based on skill or for family reunification. More specifically, immigrants are accepted according to following preferences: unmarried adults whose parents are American citizens, spouses and offspring of permanent residents, gifted professionals, scientists, and artists. The last preferences are the following: married offspring of American citizens, siblings of adult citizens, skilled/unskilled individuals of occupations lacking workers in America, and refugees from either communist (or communist-controlled) countries, or those from the Middle-East. [9] The Immigration Act of 1965 became law on July 1, 1968. [10] Even though the Immigration Act of 1965 was not implemented to bring an immediate end to discrimination, it was definitely seen as a major contributor in ending it.
Back to "Cold War Era" Chronology
The main reason the Immigration Act was the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement was to rid America of racial/ethnic discrimination. Two other bills, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Johnson signed for the same reason. [5] The Immigration Act was therefore a corrective measure instituted to atone for past history of discrimination in immigration.
Two earlier laws reflecting this discrimination were the National Origin's Act of the 1924 and the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952. [6] Both of these granted residency on the basis of national origin, and were particularly discriminative towards Asians. For instance, under the McCarran-Walter Act, while the quota for European immigrants was 149,667, the quota for Asian immigrants was 2,990, and the African quota was 1,400. [7] The Immigration Act of 1965, therefore, shifted the focus to non-European countries, especially those of the third world. Both Johnson and President Kennedy wished that by reforming immigration law, they would not only gain auspicious international relations (especially with non-White nations), but they would also confirm America's bedrock principles of America being a free country, where everyone is considered equal. [8]
Immigrants granted residency in America are now considered for admittance based on skill or for family reunification. More specifically, immigrants are accepted according to following preferences: unmarried adults whose parents are American citizens, spouses and offspring of permanent residents, gifted professionals, scientists, and artists. The last preferences are the following: married offspring of American citizens, siblings of adult citizens, skilled/unskilled individuals of occupations lacking workers in America, and refugees from either communist (or communist-controlled) countries, or those from the Middle-East. [9] The Immigration Act of 1965 became law on July 1, 1968. [10] Even though the Immigration Act of 1965 was not implemented to bring an immediate end to discrimination, it was definitely seen as a major contributor in ending it.
Friday, 4 May 2007
Dutch State News Lies
Dutch lies in Dhimmitude..
NOS JournaalThe Dutch state news seems to be Dutch most solid PC crusaders. They have a tendency not to try to inform you but to propagate conformity based on their socialist and multicultural views.
It is a well-known fact that most people with a Moroccan and Turkish background prefer to import their partner from Morocco or Turkey. This has been for year the largest sources of Islamic immigration in The Netherlands.
But today the Dutch state television told us that new research by the Dutch State Statistical agency (CBS) showed that this was no longer true. The research shows that most Moroccan’s and Turks do not want to import their life partner, they say. That would be big news, because that is a major shift in behavior change of Islamic immigrants, news that many people in The Netherlands consider positive, because that would slow down the massive Islamic immigration. But is it true?
So let’s look up the CBS report. The CBS report says that most Moroccans and Turks find it very important to marry a partner with the same background, first and most the partner must be Islamic and second related to the same country of origin: Moroccan or Turkish. The interviewed Moroccans and Turks say they don’t think it is mandatory that their future partner is born in Turkey or Morocco. The report also mentions that last year, 50% of the Moroccans and Turks married a partner from their homeland instead of a Dutch-Moroccan or Dutch-Turk. The report only says, that because the interviewed people spoke out that it was not mandatory this number “could” change in the future.
This is just one example of how the Dutch state news is making propaganda.
NOS JournaalThe Dutch state news seems to be Dutch most solid PC crusaders. They have a tendency not to try to inform you but to propagate conformity based on their socialist and multicultural views.
So let’s look up the CBS report. The CBS report says that most Moroccans and Turks find it very important to marry a partner with the same background, first and most the partner must be Islamic and second related to the same country of origin: Moroccan or Turkish. The interviewed Moroccans and Turks say they don’t think it is mandatory that their future partner is born in Turkey or Morocco. The report also mentions that last year, 50% of the Moroccans and Turks married a partner from their homeland instead of a Dutch-Moroccan or Dutch-Turk. The report only says, that because the interviewed people spoke out that it was not mandatory this number “could” change in the future.
This is just one example of how the Dutch state news is making propaganda.
NOS JournaalThe Dutch state news seems to be Dutch most solid PC crusaders. They have a tendency not to try to inform you but to propagate conformity based on their socialist and multicultural views.
It is a well-known fact that most people with a Moroccan and Turkish background prefer to import their partner from Morocco or Turkey. This has been for year the largest sources of Islamic immigration in The Netherlands.
But today the Dutch state television told us that new research by the Dutch State Statistical agency (CBS) showed that this was no longer true. The research shows that most Moroccan’s and Turks do not want to import their life partner, they say. That would be big news, because that is a major shift in behavior change of Islamic immigrants, news that many people in The Netherlands consider positive, because that would slow down the massive Islamic immigration. But is it true?
So let’s look up the CBS report. The CBS report says that most Moroccans and Turks find it very important to marry a partner with the same background, first and most the partner must be Islamic and second related to the same country of origin: Moroccan or Turkish. The interviewed Moroccans and Turks say they don’t think it is mandatory that their future partner is born in Turkey or Morocco. The report also mentions that last year, 50% of the Moroccans and Turks married a partner from their homeland instead of a Dutch-Moroccan or Dutch-Turk. The report only says, that because the interviewed people spoke out that it was not mandatory this number “could” change in the future.
This is just one example of how the Dutch state news is making propaganda.
NOS JournaalThe Dutch state news seems to be Dutch most solid PC crusaders. They have a tendency not to try to inform you but to propagate conformity based on their socialist and multicultural views.
So let’s look up the CBS report. The CBS report says that most Moroccans and Turks find it very important to marry a partner with the same background, first and most the partner must be Islamic and second related to the same country of origin: Moroccan or Turkish. The interviewed Moroccans and Turks say they don’t think it is mandatory that their future partner is born in Turkey or Morocco. The report also mentions that last year, 50% of the Moroccans and Turks married a partner from their homeland instead of a Dutch-Moroccan or Dutch-Turk. The report only says, that because the interviewed people spoke out that it was not mandatory this number “could” change in the future.
This is just one example of how the Dutch state news is making propaganda.
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