Defencelessness

Christopher Booker considers the armed forces and 'national' defence in his column today. The Sunday Telegraph itself headlined problems regarding the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, on which Ironies has ranted too frequently in the past to bear linking from here, but BLAIR'S TREACHERY TO THE NATION AT ST MALO was so grave that some of my earlier comment is now worth linking and repeating: ================================================= 1st May 2003 Tony Blair's Keynote Cardiff Speech on Europe 28th November 2002 The above was an extremely significant landmark speech, notable not least for the fact that it was made outside of Parliament in a provincial capital. It was difficult to access in full even immediately after it was presented by the Prime Minister. Now several months later I could only trace it after much searching on Google at the British Embassy site from Berlin. I have therefore put a link here so that for the moment I can continue to use it as a reference source. As Blair's view of Europe has changed following the disagreements over Iraq I anticipate the speech might become practically invisible as the months go by. This would be a great shame as it is very well thought through and is in fact remarkably prescient in light of subsequent events. The killer passage and most significant portion, other than the clear aim of the PM in throwing his hat into the ring for the job of first European President, is this portion I quote below :- The basic ideology should be described in this way. Europe is the voluntary coming together of sovereign nations. Their will is to combine together in the institutions of Europe in order to further their common interests. In so far as it is necessary to achieve these interests, they therefore pool their sovereignty in Europe. There is no arbitrary or fixed limit as to what they do collectively; but whether they do it depends on their decision as a group of nations. So whilst the origin of European power is the will of sovereign nations, European power nonetheless exists and has its own authority and capability to act. The negation of any democracy comes at the end, the sting in the tail as it were:- It should be democratic; greater integration, rooted in the freely given decisions of the nations that make up Europe; with greater openness and transparency of decision-making; greater participation and interaction of National Parliaments; greater connection between the European Parliament and the decisions of Europe; and with the independence of the Commission guaranteeing that the interests of smaller nations do not weigh any less than the large. None of the items listed of course, do anything to give the people the power to periodically remove from power those who rule them, which is the only thing that democracy is really about! Speech ============================================================== NB The link is no longer working. Try finding the text of that speech yourselves! =============================================================== May 2nd 2003 Differing World Views Today's Editorial in Le Monde discusses the different world view of Chirac and Blair. Blair seeing a world in which the Europeans compliment the American superpower and Chirac pushing for a multi-polar worlds with Europe "opposed" to America, other balancing powers mentioned by Chirac - China, India, South America but curiously not Russia - are they to be considered part of Europe the paper wonders or are they considered just too weak to be included. Curiouser and curiouser. Blairs view of this is presently not in doubt, he considers Chirac's ideas as dangerous, but let's not forget that in the past he has encouraged such thoughts - particularly at the St Malo meeting when the ERDF was launched! Le Monde Editorial Chirac vs Blair posted by Martin at 5/2/2003 03:40:00 PM 0 Comments ====================================================== Monday, September 22, 2003

Two out of Three The headline of the article linked to Le Figaro translates as follows:- Blair takes a step towards European Defence As posted below the Germans stated agreement was given towards non-Nato European Defence now backed up by this French report. Three men attended the meeting two out of the three have one version of the truth, time for Blair to own up. How long can a Prime-Minister continue in office while continuing to be caught in lies! l'hôte du 10 Downing Street a en outre fait une concession majeure sur la future Europe de la défense. 'The occupant of 10 Downing Street has made a major concession on the future of European Defence, ' the article states continuing that he had totally rejected the same formula when it was first proposed at the Nice Summit in December 2000. ==============================================