Bond scalping begins. Is the EU nightmare soon to end?

Germany’s top banker Josef Ackermann has been asked to orchestrate a private sector contribution to the Greek bailout. So opens an article in this morning's The Times newspaper, read more here, appropriately enough perhaps on this May Day morning, reporting the beginning of the end of the corporatist/statist experiment that brought us the the disastrous "global civil society" experiment that is today's corrupt and non-democratic European Union. (My posting of 28th November 2003 on Ironies, covering the collapse of the Stability Pact, titled The EU's Problems from Greece to the Golden Gate, here, makes interesting reading, especially the link to khatimarini. "You have destroyed the country" effectively accused Jeremy Paxman to Prime Minister Gordon Brown on BBC One prime time TV last evening, although it will no doubt be many years before that fact sinks into to the clearly deadened brain of this despicable man and his slimy co-conspirator, Tony Blair. (Read Blair's Presidential Ambitions from Ironies Archives 15th December 2003. (UK readers may view the TV broadcast from this link). Even the Guardian newspaper has now abandoned the Labour Party, recommending its readers to vote LibDem in its editorial this morning. The Telegraph Group with the Murdoch stable will of course back Cameron's Corporatist Conservatives (New Labour by another name) yet the leading financial journalist of the Barclay Brothers organs and the Daily Telegraph's Business Editor, this morning suggest, backed by columnist Simon Heffer, presumably bearing in mind the obvious ineptitude, experience and charisma short Shadow Chancellor Osborne, that should their paper's certain editorial advice be followed and succeed the first act of Vapid Cameron as PM should be to call in the IMF. My posting of 5th February 2004is republished in full below as it is missing from the blog archives of Ironies Enemies of Democracy in the EU and Beyond It is now a year since I wrote ‘The Risk of Pan-European Totalitarianism’ for posting on the ‘Europa Discussion Forum’ run by the European Union. Publication was refused, but I subsequently managed to get the item posted on the blog of Samizdata.net, which is linked here, and on the Discussion Forums run by the ‘Financial Times.’ I consequently started my own blogspot, Ironies, where this warning on the dangers of the EU Constitution which ignored the democratic ideals of Karl Popper, was one of the earliest posts. It now seems time to revisit the topic, as substantial evidence has accumulated within the past twelve months, that far from being a co-incidental or inadvertent event, the destruction of European democracy now underway could be the real objective of those driving the EU project forward. Why and for what motivations can such a scheme have been undertaken? Democracy can be variously defined and interpreted, a fact of which its enemies make much use. I refer throughout this piece to “Democracy” in a Popperian sense as described here:- Popper asserts “ …a theory of democratic control can be developed that is free from the paradox of sovereignty. The theory I have in mind is one which does not proceed, as it were, from a doctrine of the intrinsic good or righteousness of a majority rule, but rather from the baseness of tyranny: or more precisely it rests upon the decision, or adoption of the proposal, to avoid and resist tyranny”. Continuing with this theme, Popper argues that there are two forms of government: those that can be got rid of without bloodshed (such as in general elections) and those that require a successful revolution to replace, or not at all. He labels the first sort ‘democracies’ and the second ‘tyrannies’. Clearly, the concluding document of the Convention, chaired by the disgraced ex-French President Vallery Giscard d’Estaing, would have imposed (and still very well may) a Popperian tyranny on the twenty-five once democratic, once nation states, who will soon make-up the enlarged European Union. The EU project has been largely driven forward by deception and lies, most notably in Britain have the true objectives been concealed, but in no country has the true scale of the project been openly disclosed to the citizens. Fifty years on, with the constitution framed and the convention which prepared it openly having refused to give either consideration or even discussion to the question of democratic structures, the truth is revealed. Some open attempts are being made to justify the nature of the project. The proponents of Trans-national Progressivism at least struggle to openly elaborate their aims, as we have discussed previously as can be re-read from this link to our post of 7th November 'Multilateralism, Transnational Progressivism, the Aqui Communitaire and Howard's Tories': here. On Christmas Eve we posted regarding the secretive nature of some of the organisations that seem strongly in favour of the kind of outcomes now envisioned, which can also be read from this link "The Eradication of the Nation State in the Cause of Peace" I have just finished reading one of the most open attempts at justifying what is now taking place, being a book titled, ‘Global Civil Society’ written by John Keane, Professor of Politics at the University of Westminster, and founder of the Centre for the Study of Democracy! Published by the Cambridge University Press, Cambrideg in 2003 ISBN 0-521-89462- X. Extraordinary reading it makes too! Much concerned with the effects of globalisation, Professor Keane advances some ideas on what he calls ’Cosmocracy’ in which he envisages the citizens of the world being ruled by something he defines as ’meso-governments’, which would ‘include territorially defined states and actual or proto-regional institutions, like the European Union, CARICOM and the ASEAN pact.’ (page 101). There seems no place for Popperian concepts of ‘democracy’ in the ‘Platonic’ future foreseen by Professor Keane. On page 126 he addresses this future with this startling certainty: ‘Whatever comes to pass, it is safe to say that the global polity of the future will defy the simplifications and confusions of prevailing theories of globalisation that think in old fashioned terms of (potentially) ‘sovereign’ territorial states, or of 'muti-level governance’ or ‘cosmopolitan democracy’. We will instead be left to the non-accountable elites emerging from the centres of indoctrination that even Professor Keane recognises institutes of higher education are now being allowed to become. These in turn staffing the mushrooming non-governmental or meso-governmental organisations that the Professor owns are mostly notable for their inefficiencies. The examples of a Global Civil Society at work that he cites would by most impartial observers be hardly considered as striking successes. On page 121 the enemy of Professors Keane’s utopian dream is clearly identified as multilateralists’ well-known bogeyman, the USA: ‘If…the American empire consistently behaves as if it is morally entitled to run the whole world, and to act on its behalf, then almost certainly that roguery would have the effect of stirring up geopolitical troubles. That roguery would in turn work against global civil society, perhaps even wrecking the chances of its survival’. If the enemy is unsurprisingly so defined as America, mainly by virtue of its undeniable power, while no evidence of what the author describes as roguery is, of course provided, a broad description of who the members of this ‘Global Civil Society’ is detailed. They are we are told ordinary people like you and me, going about their daily business such as dropping off the kids at school! But on page 205 the reality is revealed Global Civil Society is a militant ethic. It is unrelenting in its quest to secure freedom and equality and solidarity through non-governmental links that spread to all four corners of the planet. Peacefully? Earlier in that same paragraph we are informed 'Global Civil Society has no 'natural' tendency towards harmony....In the face of a challenge, it is not squeamish' On page 144 however, the enemies of all that is good in this supposed utopian dream world are stereotyped as free/market ideologues, racists and nationalists peddling a Kafkaesque idea ‘that it is safer to be in chains’ . The underlying anti-freemarket if not Marxist philosophy of the book’s author is clearly revealed in this passage quoted from page (139): ‘Global Civil Society enables individuals, groups and organisastions to organise and deploy their powers across borders, despite remaining barriers of time and distance. This society provides non-governmental structures and rules which enable individuals and groups to move and to decide things, to follow their inclinations, to bring governmental power holders to heel, to engage in many kinds of mutually beneficial exchanges, even to work for the socialisation of market economies so that production for social need, rather than for profit prevails’ . (my emphasis). Note here the lack of any consideration of democratic consultation and the complete absence of the concept of accountability. The totalitarian Marxist ideal WILL, it seems prevail!