Klaus signs; the battle for democracy begins by respecting the rules of the game

"1. The decision of the Constitutional Court was expected by me and I respect it, even though I fundamentally disagree both with its content as well its justification.

2. I can't endorse its form i.e. its legal quality. The ruling by the Constitutional Court is not a neutral legislative analysis but a biased political advocacy of the Treaty of Lisbon by its champions. This point is obvious from the entirely inappropriate, confrontational elaboration as well as the presentation of the verdict.

3. Most importantly, I cannot agree with the content because once the treaty becomes valid, the Czech Republic will cease to be a sovereign country, despite the political opinion of the court. This change is bringing legitimacy to the efforts of a part of our public that is not indifferent to our national and state existence and that doesn't intend to come to terms with these developments - efforts that will take place today as well as in the future.

4. I can't accept the Constitutional Court's decision to proclaim the obligation of the president of the republic to ratify this (or another) international treaty "without unnecessary delays" by references to the law about the Constitutional Court. This bill only deals with the work of the Constitutional Court: the rights and responsibilities of the president are defined exclusively by the constitution.

5. I inform that I signed the Treaty of Lisbon today, November 3rd, at 3 pm."

(Trans via Lubos Motl)

Ha- all very glum on the panel at Labour HQ the BBC tonight. Euro elections not to the taste of Auntie Beeb.

He's got a point

Richard North says that the issues run deeper than expenses.

Yes, but.

People are looking to make political change, not an ideal world.

It's surely obvious that MEP's expenses afford worse abuses than Westminster's, but the difference is we can get at our MPs and that's where concerned people have to begin.

Only when we've got tough on our MPs will any of them scrutinise MEPs- ditto for the newspapers.

Concern about Parliament equals resistance against Strasbourg.

The issue about expenses relates to the housing crisis- so many MPs becoming land owners through taxpayer's money- especially nuLabourites on the make. How could MPs scrutinise inflationary issues when they relied on the rise in house prices to maximise the value of their taxpayer afforded second homes?

But actually, Richard would have more of a point if he tried to put meat on the bones of Hannan and Carswell's Plan. I just don't think Richard likes Hannan very much...

Zeitgeist: Mr Schultz is not for amending

"We would be a laughing stock at the end of the day. Nothing that is being criticised about the treaty is in the treaty"

Funny things, laws. It's actually rather uncommon that anyone can pinpoint much specific that a law does that anyone can get worked up about. It always does more than it says it does, because it sets a framework, demonstrates a direction, and lets an army of professional understanders of laws go to work on the practise of it.

In this statement from Mr Schultz (brought to my attention by the ever-excellent EU Ref blog from an article here), is the casual arrogance of our EU overlords. It's just this desire to save face, combined with arrogation of the right to make laws mean what they want them to mean when they want it, which has characterised despotism since time immemorial.

I appreciate that MR Schultz is a busy man, and that he has a big project afoot in which he is but a elevated functionary, but he cannot escape Europe's old malady. He's just another fascist when it comes to it.

Irresistible force - the referendum - has met immoveable object - the need for every EU member state to ratify the Lisbon Treaty.
- Jonny Dymond, BBC

Hang on a moment- let's re-write that:

Irresistible force- EU politicians' desire to integrate- has met immoveable object- the unwillingness of the popular vote to lose its distinctive voice.

I think my version's better, because it deals with what the Irish vote actually represents: resistance to unwanted political leveraging. How many popular votes do we have to sit through before we're allowed to say that? (how many popular votes will we be allowed to sit through? As few as possible, methinks)

The BBC's desire to frame the debate inside its favoured assumptions- the inevitability of EU integration, with the increasing of power at the centre and discounting of traditional national distinctions- trumps fair reportage almost every time.

Jonny Dymond gives some fine examples of this.

He says „the wonkiest minds in Europe were speculating as to how the European Union could dig itself out of the Ireland-shaped hole“

The issue for the peoples of Europe is not particularly „wonky“, its a matter of self-determination, appropriate local governance etc. Dymond states (probably quite accurately) the considerations of the Irish- „abortion, neutrality, tax sovereignty, military conscription, the loss of an Irish commissioner, the deregulation of the taxi trade“ - but fails to make the obvious connection; all these points embody those things that people want their own government of their own nation to decide. The peoples' project is very simple indeed put in those terms.

Dymond doesn't get it though, but says instead „Amending the Lisbon Treaty to encompass those objections would challenge even the mightiest Euro-minds.“

Look, whose side is he on that he can't make the obvious connection instead of lamenting from the perspective of the EU?

He talks of a „bewildering array of objections“ when in fact they all boil down to the concern that local needs will be overrun by the concerns of grand powers- it's the age-old call of democratic enfranchisement.

Dymond is besotted by the power game and cannot see the social reality: „there are serious players that want the changes laid out in the Treaty and will not give them up without a fight at the say-so of fewer than a million stroppy Irish voters“

He may consider such language to be ironic, but he elsewhere gives no sign that he senses a rationality in the electorate.

When Dymond says that Irish voters „are not dumb“ you sense he thinks he is being balanced. Does he ever allow for the idea that it's the „serious players“ who are dumb? Now that would be a kind of balance- and its so routinely absent from the BBC regarding the „colleagues“ in Europe, as it is indeed about all polticians everywhere. He who pays the piper calls the tune, as they say.

Another brick in the wall

That's all the EU treaty is, in that it simply binds together previous treaties and makes more of them operative, plus creating the platform for the next layer of EU power grabs. Or so it seems to me.

It's a sad business trying to dissect the legalities because it's not what a concerned person, a subject of his own nation, ought to have to do. Legal personality. An overall EU foreign minister. Demotion of competition law. Promotion of social protection. These are all just soundbytes really, and it makes about as much sense summing them up neatly as it does to take a few swipes at a roomful of cobwebs.

The fundamental point is this: I and most other Britons of age to vote today have never had a chance to vote specifically on anything to do with the EU, let alone membership of its various incarnations. I did actually vote for James Goldsmith in the elections of 1997 (my first vote), but with a heavy heart- single issues are not what national elections are for.

Yet the EU is not a single issue, it's a multitude of issues rolled into one, and it has created a democratic deficit which no politicians seem to want to address, rather than manage.

Britain is essentially suffering from Europe's weakness. If Europe were strong then each nation would negotiate in a complex diplomatic nexus areas of agreement that could be flexible and joined or not depending on circumstances. Europe would be a dynamic place not fixated on 0.2% of economic growth here, -.3% there.

British people, when they think about politics, think about our politics. The EU is essentially irrelevant to their thinking but paradoxically determinative when it comes to their options. The people in Louisiana seem to be far more rationally focussed on politics than the British people (this story actually holds a lot of hope for peoples slumped for many years in paralysing political doldrums).

Yet that lack of focus is fundamentally not the British people's fault, but the myopia and supine laziness of their leaders- and their leaders' ignorance, as was interestingly pointed out by EU Ref.

If you think about the only issue of hot political debate in the UK over the last ten years, the only thing which turned situations in constituencies upside down, that would be the Iraq war. Key point: that was a British decision to support the US. It was a sovereign choice, right or wrong. One reason I think that such an issue was so hot was, I think, because the lazy Europhile underbelly of public opinion was suddenly shaken (wobbled?) by the notion of a British policy independent of the EU. Quel horror!

Well, Britain, not Europe as such, was attacked in the '05 bombings. Britain still exists, and the legal fraud of the EU will one day soon be brought to answer because of sheer hypocrisy. The EU's trading standards were clearly not being kept when the country was sold the project, and sold to the project, in one referendum before the lifetimes of me and many of my fellow voters.

The EU treastitution.

To analyse this sleight of hand by the resurgent Merkel and Sarkozy, and the no-longer-needing-to-tread-with-care Blair, you have to take a step back. Of course it is correct to say that it is practically the same as the EU Constitution which French and Dutch voters rejected. Back in October 2004 Blair said "There will not be a referendum. The reason is that the constitution does not fundamentally change the relationship between the UK and the EU."

Well said, Mr Blair! Bravo!

Now he is saying almost the same thing! Here's principle for you:

"If it's not a constitutional treaty, so that it alters the basic relationship between Europe and the member states, then there isn't the same case for a referendum,"

Phrasing slightly different, meaning the same. Yet in between these two occasions, in the three years that have passed, he has continually reiterated either the commitment to a referendum on the matter on the table then and now, or its obscurity as an issue out of consideration. Three years of rhetoric- denied, as Frank Field affirms in EUbusiness:

"One of the more popular things Tony Blair did was promising a referendum... Going back on that is against all the rhetoric of a government which says it wants to reconnect with a disillusioned if not hostile electorate"

That's it, win popularity where you need to, backtrack when you can, and return to the idea you first thought of because you're too pig-headed to think of anything else. That's Blair, and he'll make a fantabulous EU president no doubt.

Nice chap that he is, nevertheless a student of mine was tut-tutting, in that slightly distant, airy way that Euros tend to have, about problems on the Mexico-US border.

To be fair to him he had actually visited the Mexico-US border, and he was commenting on the fence he saw there. I pointed out that the fenced areas were comparatively small- concentrated on urban areas. They do intend to expand them though.

But the difference between Europe and the US can be seen in the fact that in the US the debate on immigration is open, is transparent, a source of conversation across the whole nation.

In Europe the border issues may be more acute, taking "borders" to mean the borders of the EU. The problems are primarily to the South, although it seems to me that immigration from the East is just more tolerable to the Euros, in part because it isn't as visually obvious.

As so often with Europe though, the disgrace is so immediately under our noses we can't see it. There's a mechanism, it seems, that enables us to switch off to problems in other EU countries, while claiming them for our own when there's something positive and noteworthy going on in them. It may be the fact that we're just not Europeans at all ;-).

Ok, ok, and the issue is: the scandalous deaths and hardships endured by immigrants from Africa in Morocco and on the high seas.

According to the Goethe Institute, "Between November 2005 and February 2006, 1,300 people died en route to the Canary Islands alone.".

But you want fences, right? Well, the EU's got 'em, all right. And they're 6 metres high, backed by over a thousand border guards, tear gas, watch towers, rubber bullets- all of which are quite liable to be brought into action. The fences enclose those little colonial enclaves which the Spanish have never wanted to give up in North Morocco, even as they desired the return of other alleged real estate.

I dare say there is some heated rhetoric in the US about a war on immigrants. In Europe, or on Europe's edge, it's a reality. One episode illustrates:

"on 28 September 2005, the refugees decided to storm the fence. Night after night, hundreds of them scaled the barricade using homemade ladders. The guards shot at them, and at least seven died in the hail of bullets. 1,200 were locked into buses by the Moroccan Army and driven to the southern border of Morocco in the Sahara, where they were left in the desert without any food or water. Even weeks later the local inhabitants reported that they were still finding bodies".

In fact, what appears to be the case in Europe's border strategy is an approach of Darwinian selective cruelty- make the crossing so hard, so vicious, that only the fittest either attempt to make it or succeed in making it. And even when they have, that's not the end of the story.

This all happens under our noses, without much of a murmur. Indeed, how would we affect it, even if we considered it our problem? It's a policy so extreme that it has all the hallmarks of never having been discussed in an open forum, but instead imposed by some shadowy securicrats. That, there, is the Euros' democratic deficit. Right there.

French Lesson

"The great lesson of this story is that nothing is set in stone – antagonisms that we believe are inscribed in marble are not eternal."

Indeed, Jacques Gilles. But must it not also follow that allies are not chiseled in stone either? EU Ref. is following the story of the Eurohistory boys.

"The Italian language is the language of song, German is good for philosophy and English for poetry. French is best at precision, it has a rigour to it. It is the safest language for legal purposes...The language of Montesquieu is unbeatable." - CPLDE leader Maurice Druon

The above quote comes from the latest salvo in a campaign to make French the sole language of law in the EU. (via Language Log)

I doubt very much that this is a good idea.

For one thing French was the language of diplomacy in part because its vagueness allowed for all those fudging compromises which glued together the fissiparous European peace (for a while).

For another, the extreme receptiveness of English has absorbed and adopted both French and Latin legalisms and created a virtual language within a language for use in legal contexts. It's made to measure, so to speak.

The problem could be that it's not made to measure for the EU- which is basically another of those relatively frequent admissions that the EU is a kind of greater France, a fulfillment of the Napoleonic fantasy. British English adapted a form specifically to cope with the realm of Common Law, and the Froggies think they've finally found a less sticky wicket to play on where they can promote their language without looking like nutcases (more or less).

Regarding the quote from M. Druon, "English for poetry"- I can't quite believe he means this, and not just because he's French. The man is certainly betraying his ignorance; there are approximately nine words to rhyme with that most central of poetry's abstract nouns, "love"

I suppose M. Druon would make us really the unacknowledged legislators of the EU, which would, no doubt, put us at the heart of Europe as well- metaphorically speaking.

To end on a serious note, in case it seems that this political fixing is just a joke, it's good to remember that the European Court of Justice already uses French as its working language, for no apparent reason other than its location in Luxembourg. From this irrational toe-hold, the French are apparently trying to get their whole foot in the door.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

The Wise Consensus:

The DT's Farndale mulls Cameron's Eurostance via the fancies of Brian Walden:

"Tories who talk about withdrawal from Europe are wasting their energy and ensuring that their party will never be re-elected. They should accept that we are in Europe to stay. The deed is done. But he added this: if you don't like the idea of the EU, simply bide your time. Eventually its own internal contradictions and absurdities will make it implode."

That's a good example of how the British "thinking" classes are so completely letting down their nation. Do they really imagine that implosion of the EU would be painless for us, while we were inside? Is it in any way sensible to tie our medium term policies to an entity whose guarantees are likely to be acrimoniously voided? If this is in fact not the real view of the "thinkers", what kind of a unified Europe can be expected to emerge? More importantly, what kind of Britain would shape up to be a part of it (I think we already have part of the answer with increased- indirect especially- taxation, ID cards, surveillance cameras etc)?

Somalia update

Douglas Farah:


"Yesterday Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the ICU leader most closely identified with al Qaeda and bin Laden, said Somalia was now at war with Ethiopia and that “All Somalis should now take part is [sic] this struggle against Ethiopia.” The statement came the day after an EU envoy happily proclaimed that both sides had agreed to negotiate an end to the hostilities and that peace was at hand. Someone must be living in an alternate universe where pledges made by radicals with a history of duplicity are viewed binding."

Ah, the EU- ever the partner for (ap)peace(ment).