Free flights for EU wage slaves to further dirty Democracy

The following is directly copied from a Web Site "Europe for Ireland" pushing free flights to Eurocrats in Brussels who must first commit to canvas for a YES vote in the repeat referendum! How much lower can these filth sink?

A Day in Ireland to Work for Europe – Free Flights

Interested in travelling to Dublin to work for the Lisbon Treaty? Ryanair have offered us some free seats for people who volunteer to canvass for the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland.

Briefly, you should meet the following conditions:

-Flights (to and from Ireland) will be booked only for Tuesday and Wednesday 29-30th September and 1st October.

-Europe for Ireland will arrange the flights – you may not book directly.

-You must agree in writing to canvass for a Yes vote while in Dublin. We will put you in touch with one of the relevant organisations in Dublin. (If you do not turn up to canvass, your return flight may be jeopardised.)

-If you stay overnight you must arrange your own accommodation at your own expense. If absolutely necessary, we may be able to find someone willing to put you up but this cannot be guaranteed.

-The usual taxes and charges (about 50 euro) are not included in the Ryanair offer. If this is a problem for you, Europe for Ireland may be able to cover these costs, as well as the cost of travelling to and from Charleroi by bus.

-You must be 18 or over.

If interested, contact us quickly with your name, address, and telephone number, together with your preferred dates of travel. Email us at contact@europeforireland.eu or call us on +32 (0) 476084167.

We look forward to hearing from you.

MSM mum on Lisbon Poll plus for the No Vote

The following poll was released last Monday, have you seen these results put about in any of the mainstream media?

Lisbon Treaty On The Rocks

A new opinion poll shows that there has been a massive surge in support for the No side, which, if it holds till voting day would result in the Lisbon Treaty being heavily defeated by a margin of 59% NO vs. 41% YES.

In one of the largest polls of its kind ever carried out: Gael Poll polled 1,500 respondents in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Kilkenny, Galway, Athlone, Tralee, Dundalk and Letterkenny over the course of six days last week.

The respondents were asked one single question: How do you intend to vote in the Lisbon Treaty Referendum?

A substantial 723 (59 %) said they intended voting No as opposed to 502 (41%) who indicated that they would vote Yes. The survey also showed that 15% percent of voters were still undecided.

When pollsters discounted the don’t knows: an overwhelming 59% of people would vote No in the referendum as opposed to 41% who indicated that they would vote Yes. The last Gael Poll which was published in the Irish Sun (June 4th 2008) accurately predicted that the Lisbon Treaty would be defeated by a margin of 54 % for the No side versus 46% for Yes campaigners. On the day of the count -which took place nine days later- the actual result was 53.4% No and 46.6 % Yes. The uncanny poll prediction which was out by only a half a percent was the most accurate poll in the country.

Pollsters at Gael Poll which is a non-profit social affairs research organization are quietly confident that they will be accurate for a second year in a row:

“Our Poll was carried out over an extended six day period and we used the exact same methodology as we used last year. In our experience the vote is not half as fluid as one might believe. People tend to have very definite ideas about which way they intend to vote, and those who don’t know tend not to vote at all,” explains Pollster Paul Murphy.

One interesting insight that the pollsters gleaned were the variety of ‘off the radar’ reasons why people intend to vote No:

“Frankly a lot of the personalities who are fronting the Yes campaign don’t appear to be very popular and a lot of people have commented upon this.”

“Apart from the obvious well known issues, we found that people were very concerned about the curtailment of alternative medicines and the banning of turf cutting to the over preponderance of EU flags and emblems. If you were to boil it down to core emotions, No voters tend to be enraged and up for a fight whereas Yes voters tend to be motivated by economic fears,” explained Paul Murphy.

The results will came as a shock to the Government and business groups who have poured over €10 Million eur+ campaigning for a yes vote in the Lisbon Treaty. In comparison No campaigners are poorly funded with a total combined spend of just under €1 Million eur.

Irish stand fast on June deadline for Lisbon safeguards.

The report was in yesterday's Irish Times, linked here.

Questions over closure of Irish National Forum on Europe

There are enough questions over the stifling of democratic legitimacy in the Lisbon Treaty without the closure of a forum devoted to debate ahead of the entirely illegitimate second referendum in Ireland one would have thought. Yet that very action is the subject of a discussion in the Irish Independent today, linked here, under the headline:-

Risky ploy ahead of our biggest foreign policy decision in years

from which I have selected this quote: The failure of the Yes campaign to lead the debate has led some politicians to note privately the forum was “hijacked” by No campaigners.

Are Irish bread queues an EU weapon in their Lisbon quest?

Only two days ago on Good Friday predicting bread lines in a Guardian article "Ireland's pain begins" seemed a bit dire link here, yet on Easter Sunday 850 are reported standing in line! The Observer today. The miracle of the EU eh! Are the Irish now to do as they are bid?

The Euro it was that destroyed the Irish economy

The much lower interest rates in the Euro zone than those applicable when the punt shadowed the pound sterling almost certainly did for the Irish economy. An editorial in yesterday's The Herald in Dublin is worth repeating in full as it indicates the stupidity of the hope amongst EU elites that against the present economic results of this error a second Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty is likely to yield a Yes. It is titled "We are all victims of the Budget" and is linked from here.

We were warned that yesterday's emergency budget would be a tough one, but few outside of Government could have seen it being this harsh. Although everyone accepts that the country is in dire economic straits at the moment and needs the co-operation of the people to get out of this mess, there was still a sense of bewilderment at the severity of the measures imposed on ordinary workers.

These regular workers -- many of whom have seen enforced wage cuts by employers or the loss of overtime benefits -- and ordinary families have once again taken the biggest hit from the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan's, attempts to plug the gaps in the public finances.

These workers aren't the sort of people who rode the Celtic Tiger for all it was worth. These are ordinary people existing from month to month on their wage packets.

But what makes it particularly difficult to stomach is that the levies are to be implemented from May 1, giving little breathing space for those who are already feeling the pinch.

The Minister said that he had to be tough with this emergency budget, but he has hit vulnerable sectors of society. Yesterday's announcement was a missed opportunity. Instead of tackling the bloated public sector and attempting to rein in the outrageous waste of money in many State bodies, Minister Lenihan backed away. Perhaps he and the rest of the Government shied away from the issue as they didn't want disputes with the influential public sector unions in advance of the rerun of the Lisbon Treaty later this year.

Whatever the reasoning, with the Minister signalling future increases in property, carbon and child benefit tax in December's Budget, one thing is certain: the worst is yet to come.

In the interests of balance an alternative view, that assumes the misery now to be applied by their political leaders will result in a huge Yes vote second time around (farewell democracy), may be read from this link.

EU plans yet another illegality.

The Irish Times carries a report that including the Irish guarantees (that , inter alia, will make a nonsense of the streamlining ambitions for the Constitutional/Reform/Lisbon Treaty ) into the Croatian Accession Treaty will be most likely illegal and open to court challenge. Read here. An interesting article on the disarray in Europe issued by Yale University to mark today's G20 meeting may be read from here and is introduced as follows: At a time when the EU needs to present a united voice if not in policy, at least in speech, at the G-20 summit, the union is in chaos. In the second article of this three-part series on the G-20 Summit and the Future of Capitalism, professor of International Political Economy, Jean-Pierre Lehmann points to the unfortunate coincidence of Europe’s faltering unity at a time when it is needed the most. Lame duck leaders, protectionism, and stalled initiatives are only some of the issues that currently plague the EU and will impede producing any substantive outcome at the summit. While narrow nationalistic concerns and protectionist tendencies among members are not new to the EU, at such a critical juncture in the evolving global financial crisis, disarray and disunity will add more hurdles to addressing a concerted response to the crisis. Ultimately, at a time when Europe needs to project stability and clarity on the world stage, it is instead projecting confusion and discord. – YaleGlobal

German Pressure on Ireland

Last evening I read with horror this report in the Business Section of The Times Online of the state of the Irish economy, the result in my view of their politicians crazed decision to join the Euro currency. In summary the economy shrunk by 7.5 per cent at the end of last year and capital investment declined by 30.6 per cent over the year while industrial output dropped at an annual rate of 12.5 per cent, with the construction sector showing a decline of 24 per cent. In other words almost as bad a situation as England will soon find itself thanks to the deliberate sabotage by the mazed Scot Gordon Brown's schemes as described in my post below. I have today been sent a report on the threats being made by the Germans to the Irish which must only compound their despair. I quote:

The National Platform EU Research and Information Centre

24 Crawford Avenue

Dublin 9

Web-site: nationalplatform .org

Thursday 26 March 2009

Why Germany is urging "humility" on us and a Yes vote to Lisbon

Last week the German Ambassador said that a second No vote to Lisbon would have "horrific consequences" for Ireland.

On Tuesday the German Social Democrat spokesman on European affairs said that any economic assistance to Ireland would require "greater humility" from Dublin, a renewed commitment to the EU from Irish voters in a Lisbon Two referendum, and a better appreciation of "the common German and Irish interest" in continuing European integration.

Why this German anxiety over Lisbon?

One obvious reason is that the Lisbon Treaty would hugely advantage Germany, the EU's largest Member State, by moving EU law-making to a primarily population basis and abolishing the weighted vote system for making EC/EU laws that has existed since the 1957 Rome Treaty.

By basing EU law-making primarily on population size, Lisbon would double Germany's voting weight on the EU Council of Ministers from its present 8% under the Nice Treaty rules to 17%. France's vote would go from 8% to 13%, Britain's and Italy's from their current 8% to 12% each, while Ireland's voting weight would be halved from 2% to 0.8% (Art.16 TEU).

Under the present Nice Treaty arrangements Germany, France, Britain and Italy have 29 votes each in making EU laws and Ireland has 7 votes. An EU law requires 255 votes out of 345 and at least half the Member States have to vote in favour to make up those 255 votes. A "blocking minority" is 91 votes: that is, 345 minus 255 plus 1.

By contrast, under Lisbon a new European law would require the support of 55% of the Member States, i.e.15 out of 27, so long as the 15 make up 65% of the aggregate EU population. Germany has four times Ireland's voting weight now: 29 votes as against 7. By basing votes on population size Lisbon would thereby give Germany 20 times Ireland's voting weight, with its 82 million people as against Ireland's 4.3.

France, Britain and Italy would each have some 15 times Ireland's voting weight on a population basis, compared to their four times now.

Germany and France between them have nearly one-third of the EU's total population. Under the proposed Lisbon Treaty rules Germany and France would need only two other countries to vote with them to be able to block any EU law they did not like.

Giving Germany and the other Big States more of a say in EU law-making is what German Ambassador Christian Pauls really means when he says Lisbon would make the EU more "efficient"!

If Lisbon goes through and gives Germany and the other Big States such an increase in their power, how long - realistically speaking - do people think Ireland's 12.5% corporation tax rate would last, as compared to Germany's 30%?

How long would it be before the EU imposes its own income tax, sales tax or property tax on us - which would be permitted for the first time under Lisbon's Article 311 TFEU and which Germany and France are likely to push for once the Council of Ministers would obtain the legal power ?

In the European Parliament when Ireland joined the EEC in 1973, Germany had 36 seats as against 10 for Ireland - 3.6 times as much. Under Lisbon, Germany would have 96 MEPs as against 12 for Ireland - 8 times as much.

The political reality is that there is now a race on in time between the ratification of Lisbon, which would greatly increase the powers of Germany, France and the Brussels Commission in the EU, and the advent to office of a Conservative Government in Britain by spring next year at the latest.

Conservative policy is to hold a referendum on Lisbon in the UK and recommend a No vote to it to the British people - so long as we Irish are not bullied and bamboozled into reversing our No vote before then, thereby bringing Lisbon into force for all 27 EU States before Mr Gordon Brown's Government loses office.

By standing by last year's No to Lisbon, we would thereby be opening the way to enabling our fellow countrymen and women in Northern Ireland to have a vote also on this important Treaty.

(Signed)

Anthony Coughlan

Director

EPP backs Barroso for EU Commission Presidential second term

The surprise early announcement from the EPP is reported from this link. It concludes that the Lisbon Treaty ratification in Ireland will be Barroso's final hurdle, I quote: Though the EPP has given their official goahead, the Lisbon Treaty referendum in Ireland, which is expected to pass, will likely be the last hurdle of Barroso. The current climate is one that is definitely in his favour. A Czech report on the interview given by President Klaus to the Sunday Times over the weekend which I linked yesterday (repeated here) raises a much more interesting dilemma for the EU and one that may well mark its demise in its present form, that report is here and I quote: ++++++

published: 22.03.2009, 19:57 | updated: 22.03.2009 20:49:09

Times: Klaus dělá paralely mezi Bruselem a sovětskými diktaturami

London - Czech President Vaclav Klaus believes that the Irish will be under "enormous, and not very democratic" pressure to ratify the Lisbon treaty, the British daily Sunday Times writes today.

++++++++ "Enormous and not very democratic" - do those running this EU monstrosity really believe they can so impose this legalistic mish-mash of a Treaty that fulfills none of the requirements of the objectives laid down for the Laeken Convention? Let me put this forward again with another very real ingredient: "Enormous and not very democratic" - do those running this EU monstrosity really believe they can so impose this legalistic mish-mash of a Treaty that fulfills none of the requirements of the objectives laid down for the Laeken Convention, (particularly after destroying the streamlining of the Commission)? Now let us include some very present reality: "Enormous and not very democratic" - do those running this EU monstrosity really believe they can so impose this legalistic mish-mash of a Treaty that fulfills none of the requirements of the objectives laid down for the Laeken Convention, (particularly after destroying the streamlining of the Commission)and against the backdrop of the present economic meltdown? What will the name of President Barroso conjure for future generations of Europeans?

EU Propaganda spending in Ireland

The National Platform EU Research and Information Centre

24 Crawford Avenue

Dublin 9

Web-site: http://www.nationalplatform .org

Wednesday 18 March 2009

Dear Friends,

According to the Irish Times news report below, a meeting is taking place in Brussels today between the entire EU Commission and Mr Martin Territt, Head of the EU Commission Representation in Ireland, to discuss how the Commission can influence Irish opinion in the lead-in to Ireland's re-run of the Lisbon referendum next October. It is seemingly planned to spend some ¤2 million on advertisements for this purpose

The article is by Jamie Smyth, who is Irish Times's EU correspondent.

A few weeks ago the Irish Times carried an advertisement from the EU Commission Representation in Ireland seeking tenders for an advertising campaign in this country to "inform" people better about the EU. Accompanying press reports stated that this advertising campaign is to be specially targeted at women and young people over the next few months, as these are groups which predominantly voted No to Lisbon in Ireland's referendum last June, according to opinion polls.

It is well-known that the EU Commission is itself a highly self-interested party as regards the Lisbon Treaty, for the Treaty, which is a revamped version of the 2004 EU Constitution that was rejected by the French and Dutch peoples in referendums, would greatly increase the Commission's powers and functions and would provide it with many new areas of policy for which it would have the exclusive right of initiative as regards proposing European laws - something that must surely outrage any genuine democrat.

In late 2007 ago, in the lead-in to last year's Lisbon referendum, former Irish Green Party MEP Patricia McKenna and the undersigned complained to Ireland's statutory Broadcasting Complaints Commission about the EU Commission Office in Dublin spending ¤360,000 on a series of political advertisements on Irish community and local radio stations even though such broadcast advertiments are unlawful in this country, as they are in the UK and various other EU countries.

These EU Commission-sponsored advertisements ostensibly aimed to tell people about the existence of various sources of information on the EU, something that one could not reasonably object to - but they also contained highly loaded and tendentious statements about how much money Ireland had received from the EU over the years, how EU laws had made phone calls and airplane flights cheaper, how the EU had conferred various other benefits on Ireland etc.

These adverts could certainly influence people's attitutes when it came to voting - that being the criterion Ireland's Broadcasting Complaints Commission's uses in deciding whether a broadcast advertisement is "political" or not.

The Broadcasting Complaints Commission upheld our complaint and ruled that the EU Commission's advertisements were indeed political and as such were effectively encouraging Irish broadcasters to breach the statutory ban on political advertising in this country.

If this complaint had not been made and upheld, one can be confident that the EU Commission Office in Ireland would have gone on to repeat these politically potent advertisements on national radio and TV here

It is quite outrageous from a democratic point of view that the EU Commission and its representative in Dublin, Mr Mertin Territt, should be planning to spend large sums of EU taxpayers' money on seeking to influence Irish voters to reverse their vote of last June on the Lisbon Treaty in order, inter alia, to increase significantly the power of the EU Commission itself.

We appeal to you to draw this outrageously undemocratic behaviour of the Brussels Commission to the attention of people in your country and in as many other EU countries as possible, so to that they can raise their voices in protest.

Yours faithfully,

Anthony Coughlan

Director

________

Irish Times, Saturday 14 March 2009, page 11

Commission to seek ways to help State on Lisbon campaign Jamie Smyth in Brussels

The European Commission will hold a special meeting next week to determine how it can help the Government campaign to secure a Yes vote in the second Lisbon referendum.

All 27 EU commissioners will meet the head of the commission's Irish representation office, Martin Territt, in Brussels on Wednesday to consider a range of initiatives that will better inform the Irish about Europe and the treaty.

They will discuss the launch of a new publicity campaign designed to inform the Irish public about the merits of EU membership. They are also expected to agree on a high-profile series of visits to the Republic by EU commissioners and commission president Jose Manuel Barroso.

'One of the lessons the commission and the European Parliament learnt from the first referendum on the Lisbon Treaty was that the pro-Lisbon voices were too often absent from the public debate,' said a senior commission source, who added that the EU's most visible institution - the EU's executive - could not be absent from the debate this time.

The three main EU institutions - the commission, parliamentand council - all took a back seat during the first referendum campaign on the Lisbon Treaty on the advice of the Government, which was concerned their input could hurt the Yes campaign. But there is a growing appreciation in Brussels that a deeply unpopular Govenmrnt will need all the help it can get to persuade the public to change their vote.

The commission is unlikely to propose getting directly involved in the referedum campaign itself, which will remain the primary responsibility of the Government. But it will propose providing information to the public to ensure they understand how Europe plays a role in their everyday life and to clarify points of the treaty that are disputed. A new EU-funded ¤l.8 million publicity campaign in Ireland is due to begin shortly.

Mr Territt is expected to update commissioners on the potential strengh of the No campaign, and particularly the rise of Libertas. He is likely to discuss the changed economic context and how that could affect a second referendum.

EU competition commisisoner Neelie Kroes is likely to be the first member of the EU executive to travel the Republic. EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana is also considering travelling to Ireland next month to talk about European security policy.

EU Commission warned of 2nd Irish No to Lisbon

The Irish Commissioner delivered the warning to his autocratic, non-elected, cosseted, useless, fat-cat, pension-piling and overpaid colleagues yesterday according to the Irish Times linked here.

Irish Government to limit anti-Lisbon fundraising for 2nd Referendum

The report of the Irish Government's plans, no doubt only considered under EU coercion, is in this morning's Irish Times, linked here.

Lisbon Treaty as ratified is invalid under Irish compromise

Reports coming from Brussels indicate the EU is once again involved in illegality. Czech President Klaus confirms this reading of the situation as reported here. This blog has spelled out again and again how it is an impossibility for Ireland to retain its Commissioner under the existing Nice Treaty but totally impossible under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty as ratified across the Continent. See the following quotes and links: On 23 July, 2008, linked here I summarised: The suggestion is that the European Council can immediately and deliberately override a specific clause in the TFEU, that Commissioners post 2014 be selected on a basis of rotation, permanent members one from each member state cannot possibly be deemed to be rotating therefore the intent of the Treaty, as ratified by Parliaments all across the EU is immediately trashed. If this happens Lisbon effectively means the rule of law is finished within the EU post Lisbon. Will the Irish really agree to that? Let us remember that much of the claimed raison d'etre for the Constitutional/Reform/Lisbon process was the streamlining of the EU Commission. On a comment to that post I further expanded: A number equal to 100 pct of the member states immediately negates the rotation and as the Treaties have equal force creates an impossibility. As I suggested yesterday on this blog Nice allows Ireland to claim a perpetual Commissioner by smaller MS being forced to rotate between themselves but the drafting of the TFEU post Lisbon prohibits this solution. I also blogged at length on this question on 22nd July, with links to EU press statements and explanations, linked here and again on 30th July, here. The draft conclusion that I have seen for this Council clearly states this legal impossibility as follows: On the composition of the Commission, the European Council recalls that the Treaties currently in force require that the number of Commissioners be reduced in 2009. The European Council agrees that provided the Lisbon Treaty enters into force, a decision will be taken, in accordance with the necessary legal procedures, to the effect that the Commission shall continue to include one national of each Member State. I will await the definitive and final version with great interest but doubt this bunch of fixers can legally disentangle themselves from this giant fraud solely designed to rob most Europeans of their democracy! After all it destroys the main reason given for the Lisbon Treaty itself namely streamlining and efficiency!

Belgium's Al-Qaeda plotters and the EU Leaders not fit to be martyrs

Thank goodness the Al-Qaeda plotters were arrested before they could harm one hair of the head of any of the 27 EU Leaders assembled in Brussels for their summit, read the IHT report from here. Earlier yesterday these same leaders had shown their complete disdain for democracy in adopting a measure that will require the Irish people to rerun the referendum on the already rejected Lisbon Treaty. Read today's The Times editorial from here on that outrage. Any kind of early death, let alone one with the slightest hint of glory or sacrifice, is not to be wished for democracy destroying individuals such as these. Rather the people of the EU must hope and try to deliver a long and difficult retirement in penury for each Leader attending this week's summit, thus they can contemplate over many years the full enormity of their oppressive plans for some 300 million once free and democratically ruled fellow Europeans.