Britannia Radio

04 December 2010 6:00 PM

True Europeans: it's official, they drag their knuckles

I was pulling together some information on Wallonia -- the French-speaking part of this made-up country called Belgium, the part a lot of the Flemish want to shake off -- when I came across an announcement about an official exhibition the Wallonian regional government is running. It is called: 'Neanderthal man, the European.'

The exhibition is meant to mark the Belgian presidency of the EU, which Belgium will hold until the end of this month.

However, I suspect that if a pack of British eurosceptics suggested running an exhibition of knuckle-draggers to mark the Belgians running the EU, no doubt the Belgian EU hyper-fanatics would right now be slapping European Arrest Warrants on them to face charges of racial hatred in some court in Namur.

But, no, it's the Belgians themselves who see some link between low massive brow bones, rampant body hair and being a first-rate European. Who am I to disagree?

Here goes, from the French: 'The premier European community is the Neanderthal. Because, in the context of the European presidency of Belgium, it is interesting to emphasise that Neanderthal man is the European par excellence: descendant of the first human groups which little by little dispersed across Eurasia [subtle, that: it puts Turkey in Europe] at first from the near East, it is in Europe that the Neanderthals acquired their physiognomy which is so characteristic.'

Apparently this exhibition will all help Belgians discover their European patrimony.

The exhibition appears not to mention the cheerful fact that this 'European' patrimony ended up extinct.

23 November 2010 12:46 PM

Where the EU intends to go: not federal power, centralised power

I've just been reading the excellent Q & A on the Irish bail-out by City Editor Alex Brummer in today's paper. But then I hit this line: '...this might involve common tax policies which could undermine the sovereign independence of nations to write their own budgets and control thier own treading conditions. The sceptics believe this would be a huge step on the way to a federal Europe.'

Uh-oh. Even the brilliant Brummer has been infected with the weasel vocabulary.

What common tax policies and the rest would be is not 'a huge step on the way to a federal Europe.' They would be s a huge step on the way to something much worse -- a centralised European government.

This word 'federal' was only introduced into the debate on Europe back in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher because even she could not admit what the actual goal was of the

European treaties, with which she was cooperating -- centralised government in the French style, not federal government in the American style.

Federal means James Madison. Centralised means Louis XIV.

Not that I want federal government in any style at all for the countries of Europe. But let's be clear what it is we are talking about here.

What every European treaty has been leading to is a single, centralised government with power superior to the governments of the member states. For anyone to use the phrase 'federal Europe' is to do the EU elite a favour -- it helps camouflage their intentions.

22 November 2010 1:21 PM

COSI creep: or how the EU Home Office will reach into every part of your life

In my investigation for this week's Mail on Sunday about the shocking powers of prosecution the EU now has over all of us -- you can read it in yesterday's blog post -- I could only include a brief warning about the sinister new committee to be set up under Article 71 of the Lisbon Treaty.

But the committee is so dangerous that it needs more than a brief warning. Here is an example of how this new Committee on Operational Co-operation on Internal Security -- known as COSI -- will be able to reach into every part of your life. Critics say it is the beginning of an EU Home Office. And it is. But it could be even worse than that.

The key lies in the vagueness the treaty gives to COSI's powers. The committee is charged simply with ensuring 'operational co-operation on internal security.' But nowhere does the treaty define 'internal security.'

What the elite running the EU institutions mean when they keep something as vague as that is: 'We intend to make it mean what we want to make it mean. Just sign the contract.'

Something similar has already happened with Article 122.2 (TEC), the part of the treaty barring bail-outs for member states. This article says that, despite the ban on bail-outs, if a member state is in difficulties because of 'natural disasters or exceptional occurrences beyond its control,' then the European Council may grant Union assistance.

Now, any honest person would read that as meaning if Slovenia gets flattened in an earthquake, the EU can rush in some aid. In fact, earlier this year it was interpreted by the EU elite to mean permission for the €110bn bail-out given to Greece. The elite apparently decided to interpret as a 'natural disaster' (because for sure it was not an 'exceptional occurence') the fact of Greece having generations of lying politicians and bent book keepers running its government. Who'da thought it, eh?

So it is reasonable to expect the same elasticity of interpretation to be given to Article 71 charging COSI with 'operational co-operation on internal security.'The word 'internal' and the word 'security' will be stretched further than you could imagine.

Lessons about just how far activist judges in the European Court of Justice and power-hungry officials can stretch such powers can be found in the history of the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution.

You can reckon that the EU elite -- who are devious and dishonest, but not stupid or ignorant -- are well aware of the Commerce Clause. Indeed, one can suspect that Article 71 was designed to be their own version of the clause.

Under the enumerated, limited powers given to the federal Congress, the framers of the US Constitution gave the Congress power 'to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.' And that's it, no more.

Leave aside the foreigners and the Indians for now. Any honest person from 1787 and well into the beginning of the 20th century would have read that to mean the Congress could make laws regulating commerce only if the commerce were between two or more States.

But a 1930s power-hungry Congress and a US Supreme Court threatened and intimidated by President FD Roosevelt used the clause to take

control of almost any new power the federal government wanted.

How absurd the power-grab became can be gauged by a Supreme Court decision in the 1942 case known as Wickard v Filburn. It was one of the most important cases putting in place the big government, socialist programmes of Roosevelt's New Deal. Wickard v Filburn was one of the cases which allowed the Washington politicians and bureaucrats to get their hands on almost every kind of commerce, almost everywhere.

In 1941, a farmer called Filburn was told by the agricultural authorities that he had permission to grow a limited amount of wheat that season. Farmer Filburn grew 239 bushels, which was more than he was told he could grow. But the wheat was never sold in any interstate commerce, indeed, it was never sold in any commerce. It was eaten by Farmer Fiburn's own cattle.

Yet the Supreme Court agreed with the US Dept of Agriculture's decision to penalise the

farmer. A Washington lawyer who prefers to keep his name out of my blog (shy? a Washington lawyer??) has kindly given me the short version of the decision: 'The farmer grew the wheat on his own farm; the wheat never left his farm; he never sold any of it; and in fact fed it to his own animals.'

'The Court nevertheless held that this wheat "affected commerce" because if he hadn't grown it, he would have had to buy wheat to feed his animals, and maybe the wheat the he conceivably might have had to buy would have possibly come from out of State.'

Don't think the European Commission and the European Court of Justice aren't precisely aware of the effect a European version of Wickard v Filburn -- or any one of dozens of other US federal government power-expanding cases -- would have on their own powers over you, your business, your investments, every part of your life. All they need to do is find a clause in the European constitution called the the Lisbon Treaty which will allow it. And there it is, Article 71 and COSI.