20th Anniversary of German Reunification. It was announced 63 years ago. Can today’s Statesmen plan long-term democracy?

YOUR DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE

THE ORIGINAL CONCEPT OF SUPRANATIONAL DEMOCRACY FOR EUROPE BROUGHT LONG-LASTING PEACE TO THE CONTINENT. EU'S FOUNDER ROBERT SCHUMAN DESCRIBED DEMOCRACY AS BEING IN THE SERVICE OF THE PEOPLE AND ACTING IN AGREEMENT WITH THE PEOPLE. WHAT'S GOING ON TODAY? SEE ALSO WWW.SCHUMAN.INFO AND HTTP://DEMOCRACY.BLOGACTIV.EU .

03 OCTOBER, 2010

20th Anniversary of German Reunification. It was announced 63 years ago. Can today’s Statesmen plan long-term democracy?

In 1989 leaders of the European Community were shocked and worried about what they considered the dangerous consequences of the fall of the Berlin Wall. German unity --the 1990 reunification of West Germany, the Federal Republic with East Germany, the DDR, the so-called Democratic Republic of Germany was inevitable. It would create the biggest Member State in the European Community. Germany would become far bigger and far more powerful than France. British leaders were also worried that Germany would now control Europe, not vice versa.

The DDR was one of the satellite 'People's Democracies' of the Communist Soviet Union. Schuman called these counterfeit democracies. A handful of Communist leaders held power and defined policy in a secret Council of Ministers in East Berlin. They defined international policy with similar Communist ministers in Soviet satellites in conjunction with the Big Brother comrades in Moscow. Their great instruments of international propaganda, their publications, radio and television, published subtle, craftily forged LIES.

For the shocked European leaders the USSR seemed to be a permanent fixture in all their lifetime. Its continuation was hardly in doubt, even if the Cold War was in thaw. But now they had a big problem in the centre of Europe.

For many non-German leaders, German reunification was a nightmare. This was the result of a couple of decades of Gaullist anti-Community propaganda, his false reading of history and his attempted destruction of Schuman's work and memory. Some of these Western leaders tried to block German re-unification. Others were worried about a Fourth German Reich. Germany had been at the origin of three wars in a century: the Franco-Prussian war and two World Wars.

The leaders wildly proposed a confederation of western European states or a vague 'federation of nation States' whatever that is. It amounted to stronger intergovernmental powers for the leaders themselves. That was a bit stupid. It was equivalent of creating a great European 'people's democracy' where the people also had no power. Only the leaders had.

The only way to create real security is in a powerful democratic system, not a technocratic one. All sections of society should have their voice under a system of democratic law. That can prevent the rise of militarism or the rise of abusive cartels, whether industrial, ideological or financial. It is precisely what the supranational Community system of democracy is designed to do.

The second principle is important too. Only a democratic institution under democratic law can correct the mistakes of democratic leaders. Otherwise this guardian will inevitably head to become a new form of autocracy, oligarchy and instrument of subjugation of the people.

That is why Schuman and the Founding Fathers insisted that the European Commission should be both elected and composed of fully independent persons. The treaties say they should be without ties to political parties, or other interest groups. They arelegally forbidden from receiving the instructions from governments. The Council is responsible for creating a fair electoral system open to ALL Europe's citizens. It has signally failed to do so. The process of election according to the spirit and letter of the original treaties should be started IMMEDIATELY.

Nationalist and self-serving politicians have tried to block and chloroform the five key Community institutions -- except for the secretive Council of Ministers, where a cartel of politicians want to seize power and hold all power. They seem to want to ape the secret councils of East Germany or the other satellite States. That is dangerous.

The Soviet and East German experience shows that a dictatorship of the people -- a political cartel -- through such a council is doomed to fail. Any system that is based entirely on materialism, such as dialectical materialism or State atheism, has the roots of its own destruction excavating its weak foundations. Marxism is a self-blinded god. Its godless vision, void of a moral code, has failed. It spawned the many corrupting people's dictators with their greedy hands and its nomenklatura, its privileged class.

A lasting Community can only be based on eternal supranational values like justice andtruth. Any healthy society must be open to peaceful criticism and reform. Its concept of Community is a far more satisfactory way to deal with the problems of rich and poor than effete Marxism.

In the DDR the politicians built a wall to stop people leaving. It was knocked down by the people. They tried to control religious opinion and expression -- and failed. The State tried to ban a spiritual interpretation of history. Church leaders and their congregations helped put atheistic materialism in the dustbin of history. The Soviet Union repressed the Jews. They were often the most critical and sharpest refuseniks. The Soviet Union refused to let them leave. When the USSR collapsed they left in droves.

The 'people's leaders' tried to control freedom of expression and stop all non-State publications of individual authors, like the samizdad. They failed there too.

Modern democracy owes its origin to the Judeo-Christian revelation, said Schuman. Christianity has a long record of deposing of empires -- including the binning of the once powerful and pervasive gods of the Roman Empire. Mars is binned with Marx. Both are responsible for the blood of millions of victims.

Political ideology is NOT an innocent game. It tortured brave people, bereaved families, miseducated children. It would fill a sea with the blood of its errors.

In the twenty years since the Berlin Wall fell, have politicians learned anything about the supranational European Community? The Community was actually designed as the guarantee that Germany would not be able to go to war against its neighbours EVER again. That is what the founding fathers said.

Have the leaders then or today ever asked why Europeans are now experiencing the longest period of peace in Europe's history? Is it an accident? Or do they think it happened against all odds simply due to the colour of their eyes?

Robert Schuman and others gave the highest profile speeches about it forty years previous to the events of 1989-90. Why were these speeches not republished by the European institutions? Why were they not republished by the French, German and other Governments? Were the institutions asleep?

Let's look at the speeches given by Robert Schuman in 1948 and 1949 to the United Nations General Assembly.

On 28 September 1948 -- three short years after the massive destruction and hate of World War 2, Schuman told the UN General Assembly that the unification of Germany was inevitable and he, as Foreign Minister of France, was going to make sure that the unification of Europe was also inevitable because this was the guarantee that all could live in peace:

‘A renewed Germany will have to insert itself inside the democracy of Europe. The dismemberment of this old continent, so often and cruelly torn by war, is a relic of times past. ... Now, however, our times are those of large economic units and great political alliances. Europe must unite to survive. France intends to work on this energetically with all its heart and soul. A European public opinion is already being created. Already concrete efforts are taking shape that are marking the first steps on a new road..

He continued.

'We are, of course, only at the start of what is a great work. … Let us hope, God willing, that those who are presently hesitating will not take too long to be convinced about it. An economic union implies political cooperation. The ideas of a federation and a confederation are being discussed. We are happy to see such concepts being taken up, and studied in numerous international meetings in which personalities most representative of European public opinion are participating. Now is the time for such ideas to be analysed and supported by the governments themselves. In agreement with the Belgian Government, the French Government has proposed to follow up suggestions to call a representative assembly of European public opinion with a view to prepare a project for organising Europe. This assembly will have to weigh all the difficulties and propose reasonable solutions which take into account of the need of a wise and progressive development’

The next year on 23 September 1949, after he had laid the foundations of the Council of Europe, an institution that would guarantee Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms for all Europeans, Schuman reported to the UN General Assembly on progress in Germany and Europe:

‘The first President of the new Federal Republic has just been elected and the first Chancellor designated. The destiny of Germany is again conferred on the Germans themselves. Facts will show if they are in a position to face up to their responsibilities that are restored to them and to prepare their future in an orderly manner and in freedom. The rhythm of developments that follow will depend on the results of this experiment. Our hope is that Germany will commit itself on a road that will allow it to find again its place in the community of free nations, commencing with that European Community of which the Council of Europe is a herald.’

Europe's peace would be based on a supranational democratic European Community, not a classical federation or a confederation. This was the year before the Schuman Declaration. This speech besides clarifying how Schuman was to guarantee a permanent European peace, also exposes the mistake or vain boast in Jean Monnet. In his Mémoires Monnet says that he invented the term, European Community, on 21 June 1950. Schuman used the term in many major speeches before Monnet ever uttered it. He also explained what it meant.

Thus the European Community was the key that would ensure lasting peace, not only for Germany but for her neighbours. Schuman gave speeches in Germany about the reunification of Germany. He gave them in German so there would be no misunderstanding.

But let us quote another witness, Robert Buron, who records in a diary what Schuman said to him on 10 July 1953. Schuman described the options: Germany might make a secret deal with the Soviet Union or it could develop a real democracy inside a democratic European Community. Only the latter would safeguard the peace.

'Sooner or later, wished for or not, the reunification of Germany will happen. It may be in a climate of détente between East and West that would help the development. It may occur in a rapprochement of Germany alone with the Soviet Union, after elections favourable to socialists for example. The balance of the world will then be thrown into question.'

Schuman told him that the existence of the European Community had already caused the Soviets to stop and think about a less aggressive policy than world revolution. In Schuman's opinion, he recorded, 'the pursuit of a European policy is one of the causes for the decision of the new Russian rulers to move towards détente.'

Schuman was no longer in office as minister and, he said, Europe required a well informed governmental spokesman to speak out about the European Community. He would give 'a frank explanation between French and Russians about the policy of European integration.' Gaullists, nationalists and the large Communist party made this as difficult as possible. After WW2 Gaullists thought the only way to control Germany was the permanent removal of the Ruhr and annexation of the French zone so that the Rhine was the border. Then when the Community had been set in motion with its design to make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible, the Gaullists had no faith in this idea. They pooh-poohed it. They wanted their own Realpolitik. That meant, when de Gaulle seized power in 1958, that de Gaulle and France would always dominate Germany as much as possible. People called it a Franco-German axis.

It was not what the supranational Community is about. The Community involves the democracy of nation States as much as organized civil society and the people. It also involves a well-conceived concept of the rule of law, not the power politics that de Gaulle thought was the only way. Power politics have failed Europe over the last several millenniums because the conqueror of one day becomes the oppressor. The conquered foe of one day becomes the victim then the liberator of the next. And so on.

The Community started the thaw of the Cold War when Germany chose democratic and religious freedom. It joined the Council of Europe which legally guaranteed the human rights against another Hitler stamping on them with his jackboots. Today we need not only someone to speak to the Russians but to our own European citizens about the real meaning for them of a supranational, democratic Community. The Commission no longer seems to be acting like the independent guardian of the treaties or telling the truth about its origin and purpose.

We should be thankful that the Founding Fathers including men of long-term vision. Schuman said: 'If I believe profoundly in détente and in peace, I believe equally deeply that the strategy that we have traced is only realizable in practice if Western Germany remains solidly anchored to our European construction.

'It is necessary to progress at the same time with European integration, the improvement of East West relations and German unification. Everything lies in the art of progressing simultaneously.'

Schuman and others foretold that the Soviet Union would collapse before the end of the century. He told many people that this was a certainty. Adenauer, with whom he spoke on many occasions, said the same thing. The CIA and the other intelligence services were not listening. They did not make the same analysis as Schuman. They were shocked when the USSR collapsed on schedule. Other politicians at the time were not listening. They buriedEurope's founding document, its Magna Carta of democracy.

None of today's politicians seem to be listening either. They still haven't published it. Nor have they understood or applied Schuman's definition of Democracy. Instead they imposed a Constitutional /Lisbon Treaty that the peoples of the Nation States had rejected in referendums.

Welcome to the People's Democracies of Europe! Wait for the fall of the next political cartel!

20 SEPTEMBER, 2010

Council5 : European Council secretly decides on secretive G27 Foreign Policy Process

'This is the beginning of a process for a European Foreign Policy,' declared the President of the European Council, Mr Herman van Rompuy. He was speaking at the curt and unilluminating press conference after leaving the secret conclave of leaders of the European Council on 16 September 2010. It was reportedly a stormy meeting. However the public does not know for sure, because the alleged shouting match took place in private.

The European Council wants ownership of the EU's foreign policy, Mr van Rompuy said. It would be implemented by other European institutions including the European Commission and the External Action Service. Policy declarations covered the Balkans, the Middle East and the Eastern Partnership.

Unfortunately, he did not explain why such foreign policy should be conceived and determined in secrecy. After all, we are dealing with public policy. When it comes to public policy Robert Schuman said that all the Councils and Committees and other bodies should be open to the public and subject to intensive public scrutiny. Economic and political integration must be 'based on a democratic foundation,' Schuman wrote in his book Pour l'Europe, p145.

What we have instead is an attempt to create public policy in secret. That is an oxymoron.

It is also a very dangerous idea. The world is convulsed by major global problems.Secretive banksters involved in trillion dollar frauds have sapped the economy. The legalities of sub-prime loans and toxic packages are still subject to court cases, affecting actions of all political leaders. Will further trillion dollar deals among the financial elites be again conducted in democratic obscurity? Should international budget matters amounting to thousands or millions of euros be subject to democratic scrutiny while those amounting to billions or trillions of dollars not get any? Shouldn't they get a few thousand times more scrutiny?

Other multinational trading companies have larger budgets than many nation States. They thumb their noses at international laws. Is this the time for leaders to make foreign policy without any democratic control?

'We can only be strong if we are united,' said Mr van Rompuy. However, it should be recalled that the European Community and the EU is not the G27. Uniting the leaders in secret (if that can be done) is not the same as European democracy. It is pure inter-governmentalism. It will not bring a coherent foreign policy. It will leave Europe vulnerable and weak.

Firstly, what do European leaders mean by European Foreign Policy? They seem to mean the policy that 27 people plus one chairman make in a closed room as far away from the eyes and ears of democrats as possible. Secret agreements between heads of government do not make Community foreign policy. It has little or no democratic legitimacy, no supranational foundation. It is purely an intergovernmental agreement. And not even that, because the other ministers are banned from the discussion.

The Founding Fathers knew that inter-governmentalism was too fragile for the present dangerous world. The Council-style decree has not been subjected to democratic criticism. It has received no democratic assent. It has not even been debated. Strength comes from public consent after a full debate and democratic law.

Council communiques are not the Foreign Policy of the European Union, that is, the values and interests of 500 million people with their jobs, families, organizations and values. The leaders may think themselves clever. But how can even the greatest brains work out what is in the interest as far as some citizen in the far-off Arctic and the islands of Greece? The idea that heads of government can formulate a foreign policy by themselves simply lacks democratic legitimacy. Unless they show a democratic assent, citizens must conclude there is at least a good possibility they are doing it all for themselves or their own PR glory.

It is Gaullism writ large. Charles de Gaulle said in 1946 that the State must repose on the interest and sentiment of the nation. However he wasn't interested in finding out what that was. He wasn't willing to listen. That was why he was kicked out. Then, ten years later, he seized power again in what another president called a permanent coup d'Etat.

A leader or leaders with flawed character will create flawed foreign policy. De Gaulle thought he was the only one who could decide foreign policy. De Gaulle did not tell his ministers what his foreign policy was .... until he pronounced it. Once this decree was made, his ministers had to rush around and tell everyone how good and great his decisions were. This often strained their "diplomatic skills" to find a positive spin.

He decided without telling his ministers that the United Kingdom, and by implication the candidate countries, Norway, Ireland and Denmark, should not be members of the Community of Europe. He did not tell anyone until he announced it. Not to parliament. Not to the Quai d'Orsay. Not to the foreign ministries of the candidate countries. Probably not to his wife or his dog.

He announced it to journalists, based on a planted question, at one of his fawning press conferences. He decided on another occasion that France should expel NATO Strategic Headquarters from French soil. Because of the reputation of Schuman in foreign affairs, France had gained this prestigious prize, so de Gaulle tried to undo it. It was only recently that France rejoined the NATO military structures. It was de Gaulle's expensive folly.

At other times he just popped major strategic policy out in a speech such as when in 1967 on an official visit he cried: 'Vive le Quebec libre!' inciting Quebec to break away from the Canadian federation. His diplomats then had to try to explain what he meant and support the Gaullist policy. Gaullism was foreign policy without the control of democracy.

The Council is now announcing a neo-Gaullist path of foreign policy. It is by decree of the political cartel of the Council. I am sorry to have to tell them that we are dealing with 27 democracies not 27 countries bound in an autocratic Gaullist federation from the Urals to the Atlantic. This is not the time of Charlemagne. It is the new era of supranational democracies.

Secondly, secret foreign policy deals were denounced in recent history as the cause of wars. After World War One, the US President Woodrow Wilson identified as one of the causes of war the lack of open treaties openly agreed. The League of Nations was set up to make sure that treaties and international agreements did not have hidden clauses like the German Rapallo agreement after the war.

Thirdly, foreign policy formulation even by so-called democrats is too often undemocratic. It can be harmful, and even worse. Who knows what the so-called democratic leaders get up to in secret? The Rapallo agreement in 1922 on secret German rearmament was not made by Hitler but by a democratic Weimar government. Germany plotted with the Soviet Union to re-arm against the international community, making it easy for the seizure of power by Hitler.

Should we trust today's so-called democratic leaders? Do they really know what is the common European interest? Are they even working for the long-term benefit of a nation or for the TV news exposure and tomorrow's press headlines?

They wouldn't do anything as sinister as Rapallo, would they? Well, first remember that the German democrats probably thought they were doing good. They acted to support the German armament cartels. Then look at what we have now. The present Middle East policy is typically one of trillion dollar cartels and should be exposed to a full democratic debate.

Those at the European Council were the leaders or their successors who promised that after the French and Dutch public had rejected the Lisbon Treaty there would be a full democratic consultation about the next step. What did they do? They simply brought in the Constitutional Treaty that had been rejected by other means (without further referendums). They merely changed the name to the Lisbon Treaty while the contents stayed practically the same.

The easiest word for this is hypocrisy and there are a lot of harder words I could use. The conclusion is that the so-called democratic leaders simply cannot be trusted to keep their word.

Fourthly, their method proves they are pseudo-democrats, what Schuman calledcounterfeit democrats. If they had reformed their ways, if they were really democrats, they would have opened the doors of the European Council to the press. They didn't. Why? They did not want the public -- whom they are supposed to represent -- to see their real interests and character. There were rumours and documents in circulation, Mr Barroso confirmed later, that there was sharp exchange of words amounting to a shouting match going on. A very unseemly sight to see on television, enough to frighten the children.

Fifthly, under the Lisbon Treaty there is no democratic or independent parliamentary control worth speaking of. The leaders like to meet in party political conclave before the European Councils, they do not meet with other democratic institutions. They do not meet with the public. Why?

Political parties are the largest lobbyist groups in Europe. They are not very successful in getting public support or even votes at elections. They have little funds, except the money they get from the taxpayers. Yet policy and ideology is pliable enough to accept funding directly or indirectly from the rich and from powerful international corporations, even sovereign funds from abroad. Who is making the policies of the parties? Certainly not the public.

Parliament provides no real forum for debate. It is composed of the same coalition of major parties. It lacks public support. More people refuse to vote than vote for any of its parties.The proportion of people refusing to vote out of disgust or disinterest is increasing at each election.

Why before the European Council do the leaders meet in separate, equally secret groupings as members of political parties, conservative, liberal, socialist, etc? It is to reinforce party political policy, to force it through the European Council. Is this democratic? Consider that 98 percent of the European public are not members of any political party and you will see that this not a representative way to approach a European Council.

It is a political cartel at work. This is the same process used by economic cartels to 'fix' the market and cream off huge illegal profits. Politicians are not going to talk about anything else but pushing through party ideology. That is both unjust and undemocratic. Politics based on ideology is a failed cause. Witness the failed ideologies of the twentieth century. Parties vote in blocks and are now subject to other factors.

Sixthly -- and here we come to another dangerous bit -- secret foreign policy is easily corruptible. The European Commission regularly gives fines of around one billion euros for illegal cartel activities. 'Respectable' US firms and many European ones have had to cough up because they were caught out in illegal activities. If you had a billion euros and wanted to avoid another fine, what would you do? How do lobbyists work? They try to influence Commission officials, maybe MEPs etc.

However the most effective means to influence policy is to influence either the government minister or the political party the minister belongs to. Then the minister becomes, wittingly or unwittingly, an advocate of an industrial group or labour union or consumer group. Thus democratic control is especially needed to determine what happens inside meetings of ministers. A minister can easily convince or delude him- or herself. He may think that what he is advocating is good for an industry and is good for the country. One American politician, an industrialist appointed Secretary of Defence, said that 'For years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa'. That sort of thinking is shortsighted self deception.

Seventhly, how should foreign policy be composed? Foreign policy should be totally inclusive of all sections of society. Is this possible, critics may ask. Certainly, but only under a supranational democracy. All policy issues must pass through five democratic institutions who should be subject to democratic accountability. Each institution should check the others. A real European foreign policy should be organized in the following fashion. The citizens have to permit a European foreign policy first in one sector. That sector has to be designated for its importance. The Commission in full dialogue with all sections of organized civil society identifies what is the specific guideline that should be promoted as policy. It agrees to an overall framework, whether an Energy Community, a coal and steel community, or a transport community. This has to have the full assent of the all the people. (The weakness of the Lisbon/constitutional Treaty system is that it tries to include all sectors and it does not have popular assent, having ignored the referendums.)

Specific parts of the foreign policy are defined by acts of European law that are democratically agreed upon by the five supranational institutions. For example, one strand could be based on a regulation that identifies the reduction of Carbon or energy use in manufacturing, or forbidding the use of a dangerous product. It might ban a chemical product as dangerous or carcinogenic.The foreign policy would be that no such chemicals should be imported into the EU by foreign firms. It could define methods so that Europeans would not be endangered by imports.

The Community approach requires that principles and values are defined in law. Any citizen, organisation or institution has the right to challenge any violation against these European values in any court of the land.

That is a universe away from the neo-Gaullism that the European Council is trying to promote.