Britannia Radio

On the day that Ireland officially becomes the first eurozone country 
to go into recession the squabblinng - mostly behind the scenes goes 
into overdrive.  A lot of it is an underhand manoeuvre to disqualify 
the NO vote altogether.  Even if they fiddled the law to achieve 
this, however, the likely result would be to enrage the Irish people 
who, in any case,  are now feeling the economic cris in a big way

  Bruno Waterfield has suffered from the attentions of the anti-
democrats who rule the EU Parliament and he exposes them here with 
damning vigour.  READ AND LEARN from  him.

Elsewhere there is a lot that is repetitious so I’ll prune the Irish 
newspaper reports sources quite substantially .

xxxxxxxx cs
===================
TELEGRAPH Blogs    25.9.08
EU claims Irish are CIA stooges
Bruno Waterfield in Brussels
First the Irish were attacked for being ungrateful. Then Ireland's 
voters were criticized for being ignorant and infantile. Next it was 
all the fault of bloggers. Now we are told that the Irish who voted 
No to the Lisbon European Union Treaty are really CIA stooges.

The EU's great and good (clearly crazed by continued and repeated 
referendum rejections) have embraced a new swivel-eyed conspiracy 
theory to explain why it is all a United States/Pentagon/CIA/Neo-Con 
plot against Europe after all.

The charge has been led this week by German Green Euro-MP Daniel Cohn-
Bendit, [a former terrorist -cs]  a man who has long played the role 
of useful idiot to the EU's political establishment. His barmy claims 
have been taken up by European Parliament President Hans-Gert 
Pöttering, [Yes. him again - an anti-democratic monster accused of 
being neo-Nazi in his thinking -cs]  a German Christian Democrat, and 
echoed in the Commission.

Mr Cohn-Bendit, a former radical leftie turned leader of Europe's 
Greens, has resorted to classic smear tactics by demanding an EU 
investigation into the funding of the Irish No Campaign and the 
finances of one of its leaders, Declan Ganley.

The claims follow Irish Government attacks on Mr Ganley over 
contracts his company Rivada has with the US military, business 
claimed to be worth more than €200 million.

"Last weekend, the Irish press revealed that there possibly exists a 
link between the financers of the no-campaign in Ireland and the 
Pentagon as well as the CIA. This was a very interesting story and 
the explanation given was that Europe should not become too strong," 
said Mr Cohn-Bendit.

"If proved true, this would clearly show that there are forces in the 
US willing to pay people to destabilise a strong and autonomous 
Europe. If this can happen for the Lisbon Treaty vote, it raises 
grave concerns for interference in next year's European elections."

This absurd conspiracy theory has come to the fore as the Brussels, 
EU and Irish political establishments resort to increasingly 
desperate efforts to discredit the No vote.

The lunatic idea (an amazing delusion of grandeur) that Washington 
would want to intervene in European elections is gently lampooned by 
Open Europe. Nobody really cares about euro-elections - except for 
MEPs. Everybody knows that.

Of course, as Mr Cohn-Bendit also knows full well, the US is a great 
supporter of the EU, its old Constitution and the Lisbon Treaty that 
replaced it. The EU of today (especially its foreign policy and 
single currency) was encouraged by the Americans, let alone the 
British and French, as a way of binding a unified Germany into the 
West. The idea that the Pentagon would want to block an EU Treaty 
that pushes Europe to assume more of the bill for security, defence 
and, ultimately, Nato is dumb, really dumb.

In fact, Mr Cohn-Bendit and Mr Pöttering's resort to anti-
Americanism, as England Expects notes, is for a German audience amid 
fears here in Brussels that the EU establishment will get a drubbing 
in Germany during European elections next June.

The EU fixation with the No campaign's finances and the role of Mr 
Ganley is a complete denial and inversion of the real political 
balance of forces in the Irish Lisbon referendum battle. The entire 
political establishment in Ireland, with the Pope's support, backed a 
Yes vote - a priceless coalition.

The No side won, not because of Mr Ganley or his cash, but because 
the majority of Irish people (as with the French and Dutch before) 
rejected the uniform outlook of their rulers that, on Lisbon or the 
EU Constitution, There Is No Alternative.

By creating the fiction that US cash stole Ireland's vote on June 12, 
EU types can pretend to be the poor little underdog, victims of 
sinister, powerful anti-European Pentagon forces.

We should not be fooled. It is not about the EU versus the US, this 
is nothing more than a smokescreen for the euro-reactionaries who 
believe that EU referendums should only have one answer, Yes.

Mr Pöttering, backed up by the European Commission, has now demanded 
"transparency" - a Brussels weasel word.
"I have been following this whole matter very attentively for some 
time. We do indeed need absolute transparency on this because this is 
exactly what those who are attacking us demand. However, they must of 
course comply with these standards themselves, i.e. they must provide 
total transparency on what funds this organisation," he said.
"We must continue to follow this affair very closely. The facts must 
be put on the table. We cannot allow Europe to be harmed by people 
who demand transparency but do not provide it themselves."
"Ladies and gentlemen, I deduce from your applause that we stand on 
the side of those who strive for absolute transparency in all of 
these questions in order to keep Europe from suffering harm."

I, for one, can confirm that the Parliament President has 
"attentively" followed these claims. I have been pestered a number of 
times over recent weeks by his aides who have tried to place stories 
about Mr Ganley and the No campaign's finances, the CIA and Albanian 
mafia.

The "transparency" lobby here in Brussels is given much radical chic 
by Greens and environmentalists. It is a deeply conservative and 
reactionary outlook.

Many in the EU think that we, the people, are stupid and that those 
who disagree with their world view can only be malicious, dangerous 
or in the pay of the US/CIA/Pentagon/Multinational corporations/
Jewish bankers/Zionism/Communism/(take your pick).

As I have noted before, Brussels chatter about "hidden agendas" is 
code for not trusting people to be able to judge for themselves over 
arguments put forward by others. It is a call to set set up policemen 
over public life.
===================
IRISH TIMES   25.9.08
(- - - - - on the subject of the NO campaign’s funding ) Mr Ganley 
said it was not the case, as reported in a Sunday newspaper recently, 
that Libertas had "cleared" its fundraising with Sipo prior to the 
referendum campaign. He said Libertas had communicated with Sipo so 
as to ascertain the law governing fund-raising.  [Sipo = Standards in 
Public Office Commission , which monitors compliance with the law on 
political fund-raising]

A spokesman for Sipo said: "There is no provision in the legislation 
for third parties to clear spending on referendum, or any other 
campaign in advance with the Sipo and no third party did so before 
the most recent campaign
(- - - - - - - -)
It is misleading to call Libertas an organisation or a group, as it 
is just a company name used by one man, businessman Declan Ganle