I have been thinking for a long time that maybe I should have a Twitter account to accompany this blog. But I always decided against it.
You all know that I write long, detailed posts that try to explain what really is going on behind the scenes. Which is absolutely necessary. You cannot explain complex international events and developments with thousands of years of history behind it in a soundbite of 7-10 seconds.
That’s the MSM/Old media/politician way. And they very carefully “chose” what they want to report or not.
But I now think it is time to try out Twitter as “soundbite” complement to this blog.
The lead words: Truth, Freedom, Justice, Responsibility and Accountability
As the blog, it is going to be a frank, open and interesting forum. Concentrating on the important “Stuff” that the MSM/Old media “chose” to ignore.
It’s not going to be an instant news type, More highlighting important news that MSM media don’t think you should care about,
“Italy is a member of the EU. It is charged with running the government of Europe, through the European Council and other institutions, alongside our own government. Yet you have a government which can’t even sort out its own rubbish problems, and it is telling us, the British people, how to run our affairs.
In a way though,the experience is a more than adequate symbol of Europe – an expensive pile of festering rubbish, mired in corruption, surrounded by inept and impotent politicians, which is managing to piss of the local population so much that they are driven to rioting. We should be so proud to belong to such an exclusive club – and hope to share in the end game some time soon.!
As a complement to my previous posts on EU and the Lisbon Treaty, (see my posts:
If anything can be taken to define the ”European” experience, it is this amazing confrontation over the rubbish of Naples. Over this one issue, we have Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi vowing to put a stop to an ongoing dispute over whether to build another dump in a national park near Naples, after violent clashes between police and protesters.
As the rubbish piles up in Italy’s third-largest city, Naples, and at least 20 police offers were injured in violent clashes with protestors. Thus is Berlusconi forced to say: ”We expect that within 10 days, the situation in Terzigno can return to normal.” And this at a news conference in Rome after an emergency meeting – about rubbish? He needs an emergency meeting about rubbish?
What has triggered this is the government’s plans to build a new dump in Terzigno, which is located 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of Naples in Vesuvius National Park. This has for years met with fierce opposition by locals, who have repeatedly blocked access to the existing waste disposal site there. Then, on Thursday, police confronted around 2,000 demonstrators, who threw stones, marbles and firecrackers and used tree trunks to block access to the dump.
Berlusconi also announced he would release €14 million ($20 million) to modernize the existing facility, which the protesters say is overflowing and causing health problems.
The bigger problem, however, is that the site is overflowing with Camorra, the Naples version of the Mafia, who have taken control of waste management in the region. And while the current report refers to the crisis being a major issue for the Italian government for several years, with Berlusconi declaring a national disaster in 2008 – which is when we picked it up, also charting EU involvement – the problem goes back over 14 years. And still the Italians can’t sort it out.
Despite this, as we noted in 2008, Italy is a member of the EU. It is charged with running the government of Europe, through the European Council and other institutions, alongside our own government. Yet you have a government which can’t even sort out its own rubbish problems, and it is telling us, the British people, how to run our affairs.
In a way though,the experience is a more than adequate symbol of Europe – an expensive pile of festering rubbish, mired in corruption, surrounded by inept and impotent politicians, which is managing to piss of the local population so much that they are driven to rioting. We should be so proud to belong to such an exclusive club – and hope to share in the end game some time soon.
Above a short but very succinct description of the Lisbon Treaty and what it really means for the common people.
The EU’s president Herman Van Rompuy:
”Today, people are discovering what a ‘common destiny’ in monetary matters means. They are discovering that the euro affects their pensions, savings, and jobs, their very daily life. It hurts,” he said.”
The political elite in Europe DELIBERATELY constructed the Lisbon Treaty so that the common people COULD NOT UNDERSTAND IT and comprehend what was going on.
I.E. THE LARGEST TRANSFER OF SOVEREIGNTY AND POWER FROM the people and local governments to the EU central level.
And the people were NOT allowed to have their say and to vote on it. With one exception, Ireland. Its constitution made it impossible for the politicians not to have a referendum.
The result – the people of Ireland voted NO 54 to 46 %.
But of course – The political elite in Europe doesn’t accept a NO from the people.
As already have happened before in France (2005 – 55% NO) Netherland (2005- 62% NO), Ireland (2001- 54% NO) and Denmark (1992 – 51% NO)
They started their manoeuvring, twisting, some minor concessions here some more money and transfers there etc.
At ALL COST they had to have a Yes on this one. And they got one a year later.
How many times does the voters have to vote NO before NO is really a NO? Or what part of NO! don’t you understand?
And a very INTERESTING Account of how former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, in a meeting with Gorbachev in January 1989, told Gorbachev that Europe in 15 years time is going to be a FEDERALSTATE.
How in the HELL DID HE KNOW THAT??????
Well the answer is very simple – because that’s been the plan all along from the political elite in Europe.
And surprise, surprise, he become the author of the European constitution (2002-03).
Wouldn’t you say that that was another “lucky” coincidence?
Below are just a small number of articles describing the EU mess and the consequences for the common people who have to pay the price for this elitist political project.
“UKIP health spokesman David Campbell Bannerman said: “People’s health and in some cases their very lives will be put at risk at the altar of being good Europeans.” Katherine Murphy, of the Patients Association, said: “It beggars belief that patients are to be put at such obvious risk from EU legislation.”
Safety tests on EU nurses working in Britain scrapped for being ‘discriminatory’
“Ministers are ready to hand sweeping Big Brother powers to EU states so they can spy on British citizens.
Foreign police will be able to travel to the UK and take part in the arrest of Britons. They will be able to place them under surveillance, bug telephone conversations, monitor bank accounts and demand fingerprints, DNA or blood samples.
Anyone who refuses to comply with a formal request for co-operation by a foreign-based force is likely to be arrested by UK officers. “
“Belgium has acknowledged that there will be a major battle over proposals to give the EU powers to vet budgets before they are presented to national parliaments.
Formal legislative proposals on ”budget peer review” and increased ”budgetary surveillance” to prevent another euro zone debt crisis will be tabled by the Commission Wednesday.
”There is a question of sovereignty if the role of the European Commission in economic government is reinforced,” admitted the Belgian source.
Belgian officials, with strong French and German support, are pushing hard to set up new EU supervisors to police financial markets, giving European authorities the power to dictate to regulators in the City of London. ”It is necessary to transfer some decisions away from national to European authorities,” said the source.
EU officials have warned British diplomats that the Lisbon Treaty means it will have to compromise on sovereignty because Britain does not have veto for either the budget scrutiny or financial market supervision measures.
Belgium is also ready to pick a fight with Britain over plans for new European-wide taxes to directly fund the EU independently of contributions from national treasuries.
”We can also explore, for example, the financing of European projects via new sources of revenue,” said the government source.”
“explained why the euro has always been a monstrosity, and why it will and must fail. Although the current plans to ”get a living corpse to walk” are touching, he scoffed, one thing is already clear: The euro bailout package will only save the banks.”
Wilhelm Hankel, professor for currency and development policy, Ministry for Economic Cooperation, the Foreign Office, chief economist of Bank for Reconstruction, the head of the department of money and credit in the Ministry for Economic Affairs and one of the closest staff members to the German economy minister Karl Schiller. etc.
”As was once the case before the outbreak of the French Revolution, Europe‘s politicians have now lost any sense for the rights, concerns and expectations of their citizens.”
Dieter Spethmann, the former CEO of the giant German industrial conglomerate Thyssen.
“He criticizes Berlin for demanding solidarity with Europe while demonstrating no solidarity whatsoever with its people. Hundreds of billions of euros are being destroyed in Germany ”because the country has taken on the role of the monetary union’s paymaster,” Nölling says. ”In violation of all laws, we are being forced to rescue a currency that cannot be saved.”
Wilhelm Nölling, former member of the Bundestag for the SPD, finance minister for the city-state of Hamburg and president of Hamburg’s state central bank.
“But he finds it undemocratic that citizens are simply being forced to be part of a community in which one country is required to bail out another. ”What is happening here is almost dictatorial,”
Karl Schachtschneider, constitutional law expert, lawyer and professor.
Galileo Satellite Needs Extra Financing of $1.85 Billion, Le Monde Reports
“This was done by permanent representatives, known as ”EU ambassadors” who met behind closed doors yesterday to sign off the amendment. The amendment must now be ratified in all the Union’s 27 countries and will require primary legislation in the UK – ”potentially opening up dissent among Conservative MPs who campaigned for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.”
Actually, though, it isn’t an amendment to the Lisbon Treaty. According to the EU Council, it is a ”protocol amending the protocol on transitional provisions annexed to the treaty on European Union, to the treaty on the functioning of the European Union and to the treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community.”
Now, if you can actually work out what that is saying, we are talking about an addendum amending an addendum which sets out changes to transitional provisions. It doesn’t even change a treaty. It simply changes the speed at which a previously agreed change to the treaty comes into force.”
Ordinary people were misled over impact of the euro, says Herman Van Rompuy
In the first public admission of the scale of the popular backlash, Mr Van Rompuy acknowledged that ”growing public awareness” of the euro zone’s problems was ”a major political development.”
”Today, people are discovering what a ‘common destiny’ in monetary matters means. They are discovering that the euro affects their pensions, savings, and jobs, their very daily life. It hurts,” he said.”
“The President of the European Council, the body that brings together EU leaders in summits, also confessed that the euro had been flawed from the moment of its creation in 1992, a situation that had not been made clear to voters.
”We are clearly confronted with a tension within the system, the ill-famous dilemma of being a monetary union and not a full-fledged economic and political union,” he said. ”This tension has been there since the single currency was created. However, the general public was not really made aware of it.”
“Vincenzo Scarpetta, an analyst for the pressure group, said: ”The euro zone crisis is not simply about economic failure but also a breakdown in trust between the political class and European citizens. The EU elite simply got it wrong on the euro.”
The euro crisis is a judgment on the great lie of ‘Europe‘
“What we are witnessing here is a judgment on the entire deceitful and self-deceiving way in which the ”European project” has been assembled over the past 53 years. One of the most important things to understand about that project is that it has only ever had one real agenda. Everything it has done has been directed to one ultimate goal, full political and economic integration. The headline labels put on the various stages of that process may have changed over the years, such as building first a ”common market”, then a ”single market”, finally a ”constitution”. But by far the most important project of all was locking the member states into a single currency.
This was always above all a political not an economic project, to be driven through at any cost, which was why all those ”Maastricht criteria” laid down to bring it about were repeatedly breached. But as expert voices were warning as long ago as the 1970s, when it was first put on the agenda, there was no way economic and monetary union could work unless it was run by a single all-powerful economic government, with the power to raise taxes.
As was advised by Sir Donald MacDougall’s report to Brussels in 1978, it could only work if, following the US model, between 20 and 25 per cent of Europe’s GDP was available to such a government, to enable a huge transfer of wealth from richer countries such as Germany to the poorer, more backward countries of southern Europe – and how ironically has that come about!
When the 10-year-long construction of the euro began in the 1990s, all these warnings were ignored. The cart was put before the horse. So fixated were the Eurocrats on the need to get their grand project in place that the ”rules” were treated as mere window dressing. The member states were locked together willy-nilly in a one-size-fits-all system, with a single low interest rate, enabling countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece to live on a seemingly limitless sea of borrowed money. And now, entirely predictably, judgment day has come.”
As alarming as anything, with this tsunami roaring down on us, has been the sight of our new leaders preening themselves with their list of irrelevant little ”coalition policies” and babyish boasts about the ”greatest democratic shake-up since the 1832 Reform Act”, as if none of this was happening. As one analyst put it: ”They are like children let loose in the sweet shop, seemingly oblivious to the horrendous reality unfolding before us.”
Europe’s deflation torture is a gift to the Far Left
“Communist leader Jerónimo de Sousa said last week that the country was being reduced to a ”protectorate of Brussels”, cowed into submission by financial blackmail. He invoked the civil war in 1383 when the country rallied heroically to expel the foreign opressor – with English help, the ”ultimato inglês” as he calls it – from Portuguese soil.
”It is not just the Communists who are worrying about this. There are a great numbers of Portuguese who are concerned that this country built over the centuries, for better or worse, on a foundation of sovereignty and independence is endangered by accepting everything that comes from Brussels without a trace of patriotism. The EU’s claim of economic and social cohesion is just propaganda,” he told Publico. “
“It was refreshing to read ”The Euro Burns” by Michael Schlecht, Die Linke’s economic guru, arguing that the primary cause of Euroland’s crisis is ”German wage-dumping”. He shows from Eurostat data that German labour costs rose 7pc between 2000 and 2008, compared to 34pc in Ireland, 30pc in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, 28pc in Greece and Holland, and 20pc in France. Again, my loose translation.
Germany ran an accumulated trade surplus of €1,261bn over the period, while Spain ran a deficit of €598bn, and Portugal €273bn. This shell game was kept afloat by recycling German capital to Club Med debt markets beyond sustainable levels until it all blew up over Greece. The Club Med victims are now trapped. “
“The North-South divide within EMU has been allowed to go so far that any solution must now be offensive to either side, and therefore will be resisted. The euro is becoming an engine of intra-European tribal hatred. Brilliant work, Monsieur Delors.”
Less influence and a slower recovery: the dangers for Britain of crisis at heart of eurozone
“While every one of the 27 EU member states is looking to cutting public expenditure – some more than others – the EU is demanding a £6.3 billion increase in its budget to bring its spending ”into line with its new powers under the Lisbon Treaty.”
So much for the claim that Lisbon was a mere amending treaty, but then the ”colleagues” always have lived on a diet of lies, confident that when the chips are down, they can still hold out their hands and the member state governments will come rushing to throw money at them.
In the 2010/11 financial period, British taxpayers will have to hand over £7.9 billion – that is £7,900,000,000, or more than £400 for every household – to keep the ”colleagues” in the luxury they most certainly do not deserve, while the EU enjoys a budget of£113 billion for its 2011 financial year (which coincides with the calendar year).
This situation is beyond irony as the commission has been urging on member state governments cutbacks in their own finances, and – according to Bruno Waterfield – is calling for a six percent cut in British public spending by 2013.
At the same time, we are continually assailed by EU laws and requirements which further add to the cost of governance and daily life, all promulgated by institutions where profligacy is their middle name. And to this, we append our now ritual question – and the reason we do not rise up and slaughter them all is?
The question becomes less rhetorical with each passing day – the pics are of the Résidence Palace in Brussels, that £280 million monstrosity to house the European Council, symbol of being ”in Europe but not ruled by Europe,” as that idiot Cameron would have us believe.”
“It is easy to overcook the idea of the European Union being in crisis. It is always said—by its supporters and its critics alike—to be approaching one sort of exciting denouement or another. But then it passes, the caravan moves on and in time another potential disaster that can be negotiated around swings into view.”
“Even the death of the EU constitution, which seemed like a serious impediment to the progress of the project, wasn’t much of a setback in the end. It was simply reborn as the Lisbon Treaty.
The motive force behind the EU is integration and the creation of a continent-wide power block. National governments and the Brussels-based bureaucracyhave so much invested in advancing that cause that any obstacles will not be allowed to cause more than temporary interruptions. They have become expert at improvising ways to press on regardless.”
“Yes, after much wrangling a deal to support stricken Greece is in place, but only with the Germans enforcing strict conditions. This is a sticking plaster solution. What must come, logically, is something close to a form of economic government by those states that want to stay as the inner core of the euro. It might be called by another name, but that is what it will be.
And that leads to a full-blown political crisis for the EU itself. The choice for various countries then is between trying to be part of an inner core organized around the euro with coordinated fiscal policy, or standing outside it in a trading zone built on cooperation rather than coercion.
The Eurosceptics, in countries such as Britain, are just starting to realize this. The euro’s problems will force its strongest members into much closer integration than even they currently envisage. Other than breaking up the euro they can do nothing else—standing still isn’t an option. In this way that old discussion about there being two distinct Europe’s inside the EU is coming back rapidly into fashion. Sounds like it has the makings of a proper crisis.”
EUROBAROMETER 73 – PUBLIC OPINION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION
The EU has become a lumbering, unaccountable mess, says Christopher Booker.
By Christopher Booker, Published: 7:00PM BST 11 Sep 2010
The latest findings of Eurobarometer, the EU’s own polling organisation, show that less than half its citizens now believe it is a “good thing”. In many countries, its popularity is at record lows, and only 19 per cent see the EU as “democratic” (in Britain, Finland and Latvia this is as low as 10 per cent).
What makes this particularly ironic is that in 2001 the EU’s leaders issued their Laeken Declaration, admitting that the EU faced a crisis through its “democratic deficit”. Their remedy was the process designed to give Europe a “constitution”. After eight years of negotiation, obfuscation, lies and referendum-reverses, they got the constitution they wanted (although they had to disguise it as the Lisbon Treaty).The upshot of this tortuous attempt to “bring Europe closer to its peoples” is that those peoples see the EU as less democratic than ever.
Meanwhile, armed with its new powers, the inflated engine of our EU government rolls on, more power-crazed than ever. It is spending £800 million on setting up its new worldwide diplomatic service, with 100 of its officials earning more than our own shrunken and virtually irrelevant Foreign Secretary William Hague.
Also now on the table are the EU’s options for imposing its own taxes, the front-runner being a tax on financial transactions to which Britain, as a world financial centre, would contribute 70 per cent, more than 300 billion euros a year. Britain and the City will also be hit hardest by the EU’s seizure of control over the regulation of financial services.
Our Chancellor, George Osborne, has just conceded the EU’s right to “supervise” the contents of national budgets, taking away much of a power Parliament has exercised for centuries. Britain also seems likely to lose what remains of the EU budget rebate won by Mrs Thatcher, putting up our yearly contributions to the EU by another £3 billion – even though, for every £1 we get back from Brussels for our farmers, we already hand over £2 to farmers in other countries.
Theresa May, our Home Secretary, weakly claims that she wants reform of the European Arrest Warrant, when half of all those affected by it are being extradited from Britain. The EU’s response, in effect, is that we agreed to this travesty of justice and we must learn to live with it.
But no current issue better illustrates the bizarre nature of the system to which we have surrendered the power to run our country than the chaos inflicted on our hospitals by the enforced application of the EU’s working time directive. Led by John Black, head of the Royal College of Surgeons, medical professionals protest that this is threatening many patients’ lives.
Even the European Commission freely admits, in a recent “communication” to the European Parliament and sundry others, that its rules are, in practice, highly “unsatisfactory” and in need of urgent reform. But it adds that attempts to amend the directives have been going on since 2004 and that any chance of getting the reforms needed will involve so many consultations and negotiations that little is likely to happen for years.
Of course, if we still had the power to run our own country, this crisis in the NHS and much else besides could be sorted out within months, But since our Government seems quite happy to continue handing over even more powers to this crazy system, there is nothing we can do about it – until eventually the whole lumbering, labyrinthine, unaccountable, undemocratic mess implodes under the weight of its own contradictions.
There are other long time key players involved in this drive for one world government. Their arguments have varied but for the last 35 years environment, and now the Global Warming Hysteria, had been the main driving force behind it.
You will find that some of the key figures keep popping up in all of these organisations. In a complex web these organisations intermingle and cross support each other. Even if they are formally separate with slightly different agendas.
So in this post I will point to the Club of Rome and of Maurice Strong. Both key players in the planning and execution of these ideas.
Maurice Strong has demonstrated an uncanny ability to manipulate people, institutions, governments, and events to achieve the outcome he desires. Through his published writings and public presentations he has declared his desire to empower the U.N. as the global authority to manage a new era of global governance.He has positioned his NGO triumvirite, the IUCN, WWF, and the WRI, to varnish U.N. activity with the perception of ”civil society” respectability. And now he has been appointed Senior Advisor to the U.N. Secretary General and assigned the responsibility of reforming the United Nations bureaucracy. The fox has been given the assignment, and all the tools necessary, to repair the henhouse to his liking.
And he is an ”intresting” figure to say the4 least.
Strong did business deals with arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, and wound up with a 200,000-acre ranch in Colorado – which his wife, Hanne, runs as a New Age spiritual colony called the Baca.
2005 Oil-for-Food scandal and hiring practice criticisms
In 2005, during investigations into the U.N.’s Oil-for-Food Programme, evidence procured by federal investigators and the U.N.-authorized inquiry of Paul Volckershowed that in 1997, while working for Annan, Strong had endorsed a check for $988,885, made out to ”Mr. M. Strong,” issued by a Jordanian bank. It was reported that the check was hand-delivered to Mr. Strong by a South Korean businessman, Tongsun Park, who in 2006 was convicted in New York federal court of conspiring to bribe U.N. officials to rig Oil-for-Food in favor of Saddam Hussein. During the inquiry, Strong stepped down from his U.N. post, stating that he would ”sideline himself until the cloud was removed”. Strong now lives in Beijing.[14]
Strong was the UN’s envoy to North Korea until July 2005. According to Associated Presshis contract was not renewed ”amid questions about his connection to a suspect in the UN oil-for-food scandal”, Tongsun Park, as well as due to criticism that he gave his stepdaughter a job at the UN contrary to UN staff regulations against hiring immediate family.[15]
“In 1978, a mystic informed Hanne and Maurice Strong that ”the Baca would become the center for a new planetary order which would evolve from the economic collapse and environmental catastrophes that would sweep the globe in the years to come.” The Strongs say they see the Baca, which they call ‘The Valley Of the Refuge Of World Truths ,'” as the paradigm for the entire planet and say that the fate of the earth is at stake. Shirley MacLaine agrees – her astrologer told her to move to the Baca, and she did. She is building a New Age study center at the Baca where people can take short week-long courses on the occult!
Apparently, the Kissingers, the Rockefellers, the McNamaras, the Rothschild’s, and other Establishment New World Order elitists all agree as well, for they do their pilgrimage to the Baca – where politics and the occult – the New World Order and the New Age – all merge. Watch Maurice Strong and watch the Baca!”
He told Maclean’s magazine in 1976 that he was ”a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.” He warns that if we don’t heed his environmentalist warnings, the Earth will collapse into chaos.
In 1990, Strong told a reporter a scenario for the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland – where 1,000 diplomats, CEOs and politicians gather ”to address global issues.”
“Each year the World Economic Forum convenes in Davos, Switzerland. Over a thousand CEOs, prime ministers, finance ministers, and leading academics gather in February to attend meetings and set the economic agendas for the year ahead. What if a small group of these word leaders were to conclude that the principle risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich countries?And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? Will the rich countries agree to reduce their impact on the environment? Will they agree to save the earth?The group’s conclusion is ”no.” The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides:isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?
This group of world leaders form a secret society to bring about a world collapse. It’s February. They’re all at Davos. These aren’t terrorists – they’re world leaders.They have positioned themselves in the world’s commodity and stock markets. They’ve engineered, using their access to stock exchanges, and computers, and gold supplies, a panic. Then they prevent the markets from closing. They jam the gears. They have mercenaries who hold the rest of the world leaders at Davros as hostage. The markets can’t close. The rich countries…?
The journalist adds, ”and Strong makes a slight motion with his fingers as if he were flicking a cigarette butt out of the window. I sat there spellbound…. He is, in fact, co-chairman of the Council of the World Economic Forum. He sits at the fulcrum of power. He is in a position to do it.”
WEST magazine May, 1990 entitled ”The Wizard of the Baca Grande”:
“Journalist Elaine Dewar, who interviewed Strong, described why he loved the UN.
”He could raise his own money from whomever he liked, appoint anyone he wanted, control the agenda,” wrote Dewar.
”He told me he had more unfettered power than a cabinet minister in Ottawa. He was right: He didn’t have to run for re-election, yet he could profoundly affect lives.”
Strong prefers power extracted from democracies, and kept from unenlightened voters. Most power-crazed men would stop at calling for a one world Earth Charter to replace the U.S. Constitution, or the UN Charter.
But in an interview with his own Earth Charter Commission, Strong said ”the real goal of the Earth Charter is it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments. It will become a symbol of the aspirations and commitments of people everywhere.” Sounds like Maurice was hanging out at his spirit ranch without his sunhat on. “
In 1991, Strong wrote the introduction to a book published by the Trilateral Commission, called Beyond Interdependence: The Meshing of the World’s Economy and the Earth’s Ecology, by Jim MacNeil. (David Rockefeller wrote the foreword). Strong said this:
”This interlocking…is the new reality of the century, with profound implications for the shape of our institutions of governance, national and international. By the year 2012, these changes must be fully integrated into our economic and political life.”
In an essay by Strong entitled Stockholm to Rio: A Journey Down a Generation, he says:
”Strengthening the role the United Nations can play…will require serious examinationof the need to extend into the international arena the rule of law and the principle of taxation to finance agreed actions which provide the basis for governance at the national level. But this will not come about easily. Resistance to such changes is deeply entrenched. They will come about not through the embrace of full blown world government, but as a careful and pragmatic response to compelling imperatives and the inadequacies of alternatives.”
”The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation. What is needed is recognition of the reality that in so many fields, and this is particularly true of environmental issues, it is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation-states, however powerful.The global community must be assured of environmental security.”[8]
And here are some more quotes:
“We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.”
“Licences to have babies incidentally is something that I got in trouble for some years ago for suggesting even in Canada that this might be necessary at some point, at least some restriction on the right to have a child.”
“After all, sustainability means running the global environment – Earth Inc. – like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital.”
“I am convinced the prophets of doom have to be taken seriously.”
Maurice Strong Interview BBC1972
From Jesse Ventura how was a believer:
How Strong since 2005 (after the UN scandal), moved to Beijing and became an agent for the Chinese government. And helps them to sell and trade carbon credits. Making another fortune for himself.
An interview about his book “Where on Earth are you going?” from April 24,2001
Maurice Strong’s unprecedented rise to power. From the CBC documentary ‘Life and Times’ (2004).
The documentary presents Strong in an very favorable and glowing light .But it give some interesting insights. Such as the influence of his socialist principal. And how he was vetted by globalist kingpin David Rockefeller in the mid-40s, at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, after Strong landed a job there with the help of people who had connections to the UN.
And here are some more quotes from previous posts about the goal behinf the Global Warming Hysteria:
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
– The Club of Rome’s The First Global Revolution (1991) by Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider – Page 75
The political stream was the pursuit of Maurice Strong and all those descendants of the Club of Rome including President Obama who want one world government with total control over everybody. That goal has not changed. The 1974 report of the Club of Rome titled, Mankind at the Turning Point says, “It would seem that humans need a common motivation…either a real one or else one invented for the purpose…In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.” (my emphasis). H. L. Mencken’s comment that, “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule” is validated.
”The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it” — H L Mencken
Here are some revealing quotes from some environmentalists. They are SOOOO humane are they not:
”The First Global Revolution” (1991, p. 104) published by the ”Club of Rome”:”In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…. All these dangers are caused by human intervention… The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”
I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.
—John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs.
—John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
We advocate biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake. It may take our extinction to set things straight.
—David Foreman, Earth First!
Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.
—Dave Forman, Founder of Earth First!
If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS
—Earth First! Newsletter
Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, is not as important as a wild and healthy planets…Some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.
—David Graber, biologist, National Park Service
To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem.
—Lamont Cole
Poverty For “Those People”
We, in the green movement, aspire to a cultural model in which killing a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of 6-year-old children to Asian brothels.
—Carl Amery
If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.
A short but very succinct description of the Lisbon Treaty and what it really means for the common people.
And the background of the new EU foreign minister (the High Representative for Foreign Affairs). Here main qualification seems to have been here lack of diplomatic experience. And that she is a Labor Baroness (she worked with business to abolish inequality), and has never held an elected office before. As the Gerald Warner so aptly point out: “this serial appointee is custom-made for high EU office”.
As Peter Ludlow, the European Strategy Forum, a Brussels think-tank put it: ”She would be a first rate disaster”.
Or as a French official said: ”She has little experience and is a bizarre choice”.
But they always complain don’t they.
And as Andrew Duff, a Liberal Democrat MEP, described her ”reassuringly dull.”
One thing is clear about the new EU president, who will be named at a private dinner in Brussels: whoever it is, you won’t have had any say, says Daniel Hannan.
By Daniel Hannan
Published: 5:53PM GMT 19 Nov 2009
Who will it be? Who will emerge as the President of Europe, le plus grand de tous les fromages, the man who gets to snap his fingers and drawl ”Yo, Obama”?
One thing is clear: whoever it is, you won’t have had any say. Barack Obama got to be president of 300 million Americans after an exhaustive, and exhausting, series of primaries and ballots lasting over a year. By the end of that campaign, Americans knew exactly what they were getting. The man who will be president of 500 million Europeans, by contrast, will be selected at a private dinner in Brussels tonight.
In true EU style, the dinner will involve a lot of horse trading. Other jobs are in the frame, notably that of EU foreign minister. Balances must be struck: if one position goes to a large country, another will go to a small country. If Western Europe gets one prize, Eastern Europe will want another. If a Christian Democrat wins one plum, a Socialist can expect another.
And they are plums: quite apart from a largely tax-free salary of nearly quarter of a million pounds, you get 20 staff, a housing allowance, an entertainment allowance, a driver and a lifelong pension. No wonder that old freebiemeister Tony Blair was so interested – even if he is now out of the race.
In a sense, though, who gets the job matters less than the fact of its existence. When did you vote to create a President of Europe? When did you vote to give the EU a foreign minister, overseas embassies, a diplomatic corps? When did you vote to set up a pan-European system of criminal justice, complete with a European Public Prosecutor? All these things proposals are in the Lisbon Treaty, which comes into effect a week on Tuesday. Yet, despite the fact that all three British parties promised us a referendum on the treaty, we never got one.
How appropriate: an undemocratic appointment to an undemocratic post created by an undemocratic treaty.”
Herman Van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton land top EU jobs
” The little-known Belgian federalist and the Labour peer who has never held elected office were selected at a meeting in Brussels.
EU leaders chose the Belgian prime minister as the first President of the European Council. Britain’s European Trade Commissioner was made the High Representative for Foreign Affairs.
The surprise combination emerged after Gordon Brown ended Tony Blair’s hopes of becoming president, abandoning his support for his successor and proposing Baroness Ashton for the foreign job instead.
The Prime Minister’s switch surprised European leaders, not least because of Baroness Ashton’s lack of diplomatic experience.
A former health authority chairwoman made a peer in 1999, she held a string of low-key ministerial posts until last year when she was sent to Brussels as an interim replacement for Lord Mandelson on his return to the Cabinet.
Mr Van Rompuy is a poetry-writing economist almost entirely unknown outside Belgium until he emerged as EU leaders’ choice for a president who could not possibly overshadow national leaders.
A staunch advocate of European integration, he has backed policies including a European-wide tax on all financial transactions to fund EU work.
The choice of two low-key candidates for the new posts reflected European leaders’ reluctance to transfer too much power to Brussels-based officials. Originally, the two jobs created by the Lisbon Treaty were intended to give the EU strong and unified voice in global affairs.
But Baroness Ashton’s lack of experience on the diplomatic stage was criticised last night. ”She would be a first rate disaster,” said Peter Ludlow, of the European Strategy Forum, a Brussels think-tank.
Andrew Duff, a Liberal Democrat MEP, described the peer as ”reassuringly dull.”
French diplomatic sources questioned Britain’s seriousness over proposing Baroness Ashton for Europe’s most senior foreign affairs post.
”We think it is a British trick to point at Ashton while really preparing the ground for someone or something else,” said a French official. ”She has little experience and is a bizarre choice. It would be a sign that European diplomacy is downgraded to an economic policy post.”
British sources defended the nomination of Baroness Ashton, a Labour peer who has no formal diplomatic experience and has never won elected office. ”She is regarded by other European leaders as a very strong candidate,” said Mr Brown’s spokesman.
Another UK source said that by proposing her for the job, Mr Brown was ensuring the high representative could not be considered Europe’s foreign minister. The source said: ”This means the job is not a foreign minister job, it’s a job of co-ordinating policies among 27 members.”
Mr Brown had publicly campaigned for Mr Blair to take the presidency, but switched positions after European socialist leaders made clear they would not support the former premier.
”As it became clear that the chances of a Blair presidency were declining, the Prime Minister made a decisive intervention and nominated Baroness Ashton,” Downing Street said.
But the demise of Mr Blair’s candidacy threatened to unleash some of the bitterness that marked his relationship with Mr Brown when the two men were in Government together.
Many diplomats in Brussels think that Mr Brown had not done everything he could to advance Mr Blair’s cause, considering the Prime Minister’s backing for his predecessor as half-hearted at best.
Anthony Seldon, Mr Blair’s biographer, said Mr Blair was ”disappointed” by what he saw as a lack of support for his candidacy in Britain.
The former Prime Minister has been left deeply ”disappointed that many of his friends in Europe, and a number of fellow countrymen, didn’t do more for his cause,” according to Dr Seldon.
A source close to Mr Brown insisted that he did everything he could for his predecessor. ”There is no question of being half-hearted,” the source said.
But one British Government source expressed irritation that Mr Blair persistently refused to declare himself a candidate for the post, apparently insisting that he would not seek the job but would accept it if it was offered to him.
The source said: ”If Tony had bothered to campaign, he might have had it, but he wouldn’t lower himself so we had to do it all for him.”
The end of Mr Blair’s presidential bid was major boost for Mr Van Rompuy. Before the dinner, his other main rival for the presidency, Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch Prime Minister, pulled out of the race and publicly declared ”I’m not a candidate”. The decision was made last night over a dinner of wild mushrooms, spiced sea bass and chocolate fondant.”
Just because you have never heard of her, that does not mean that Baroness Ashton, the new EU foreign minister, is negligible, says Gerald Warner.
Published: 9:44AM GMT 20 Nov 2009
Bang go the reputations of Metternich and Talleyrand. European diplomacy has a dynamic new exponent and it is none other than Baroness Ashton of Upholland (not, apparently, a derogatory remark made about the Netherlands No voters in their Lisbon Treaty referendum), the newly anointed High Representative for Foreign Affairs of the European Union.
And, wow, does this lady tick all the boxes. Just because you have never heard of her, that does not mean she is negligible. Hers is a CV to die for. Her first political office was as vice-chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; now she is in charge of European security policy. As Director of Business in the Community she worked with business to abolish inequality (that is why she is a baroness, unlike less equal people). From there she rose to global realpolitik, chairing Hertfordshire Health Authority, not to mention the board of governors of her children’s school.
After that, her career went stratospheric as she became successively Vice President of the National Council for One Parent Families (an iconic post, that), Leader of the House of Lords (thus successfully abolishing at least her own inequality) and UK European Commissioner in succession to the Grand Duke Mandy. She was also voted Politician of the Year by Stonewall, thus reinforcing her PC credentials. Now comes the final apotheosis, as successor to Richelieu, Bonaparte and Bismarck in shaping the destinies of Europe.
What’s not to like? From a Eurofederalist, right-on, PC, anti-Little Englander point of view? But the more discerning observers will already have noted the Baroness’s supreme qualification for Europower and endorsement by the elite: she is totally untainted by any experience of democratic election at any stage in her career – unless you are small-minded enough to count her coronation by EU leaders as a momentary brush with a miniscule ballot box. Horses for courses: this serial appointee is custom-made for high EU office.
Den svenska utrikesförvaltningen (UD) är nu i praktiken “död” och begravd när nu Lissabonfördraget officiellt snart börjar gälla.
Den utveckling som tog sin början med Göran Perssons styre (1996-2006) där han med hjälp av Nuder och Danielsson plus statsrådsberedningen, AKTIVT arbetade för att degradera och sätta UD på ”plats”. Allt för att göra UD till ett lydigt departement bland andra i regeringskansliet styrd av förvaltnings avdelningen.
Han ville bli av med alla dessa självständiga och kompetenta statstjänstemän/kvinnor som var ett hinder för den totala politisering av hela regeringskansliet som var hans strävan.
Den där gamla statsvetenskapliga modellen där regeringskansliet består av självständiga statstjänstemän som utför sina arbeten professionellt och utan partipolitiska bindningar, och några politiskt tillsatta personer i nyckelställning, är sedan läge död och begraven.
Hela regeringskansliet är nu i grunden GENOMPOLITISERAT NER TILL LÄGSTA NIVÅ.
Och den nuvarande borgerliga regeringen tog över detta utan att ändra något och har bara FORTSATT på denna linje.
Jag har alltid bedömt mina chefer (utrikesministrar) efter två mallar – dels hur de faktiskt sköter utrikespolitiken och dels hur de sköter departementet/myndigheten UD/UM
Och det är bara tyvärr att konstatera att Carl Bildt vad det gäller den senare frågan ÄR TOTALT OINTRESSERAD AV och har noll koll på vad som faktiskt händer på departementet och med dess personal.
Ej heller är han visat något som helst intresse för de kraftigt försämrade arbetsvillkoren, både ute och hemma. Och vi pratar här om allt från arbetsmiljö, godtycke i tjänstetillsättningar, extremt hård arbetsbelastning, urusel lön utom för chefernas gunstlingar etc. etc.
Som ett litet ex. kan tas de nya utlandsvillkoren UVA (som röstades igenom under den förra regeringen), som innebär att de utsända på våra ambassader, delegationer och konsulat FÖRLORAR mellan 7.000-25.000 krI MÅNADEN NETTO i 91 % fallen.
Och vi pratar här OM DE FAKTISKA KOSTNADERNA för individen som det innebär att vara stationerad utomlands, och inte om någon tjusig representation under ”kristallkronorna”.
Vilken annan arbetsgrupp skulle snällt finna sig i sådana försämringar? Om det vore ett privat företag så skulle LO slå på trummorna och ryta att detta var oacceptabelt och gå ut i strejk. Men nu gäller det ju bara de tjänstemän som skall värna Sverige och vara vår spjutspetts utomlands så då är det tydligen inte så viktigt.
Med de nya villkoren så behandlas vi som den fattige kusinen från landet. Och vi behöver bara jämföra oss med våra nodiska granländer för att inse på vilken absolut bottennivå vi NU ligger.
För att nu inte tala om vi jämför oss med våra kollegor som jobbar åt svenska eller internationella företag utomlands.
Eller hemska tanke, om vi jämför oss med FN, EU och det nya EEAS, IMF etc.
Men här kommer det fina i kråksången – UD anställda anses nämligen ”så värdefulla” att VI FÅR INTE STREJKA
”Föga anade man då vad som komma skulle. Jo, nog blev det individuell lönesättning alltid! Dvs. chefens gunstlingar och favoriter stack iväg som en raket vad det gäller löneutvecklingen. Däremot kärnan av duktiga medarbetare, framför allt sådana med lång erfarenhet och stor kompetens, och som alltid (dumt nog som det har visat sig) har ställt upp då det har behövts av en eller annan anledning.
Det är denna kärna av medarbetare som är ryggraden i all verksamhet i varje departement. De kan ”hantverket” utan och innan, lagar etc. och de är en grundförutsättning för den offentliga verksamhetens oförvitlighet. Kort sagt Sveriges fortlevnad som rättsstat.
Det är dessa personer som arbetsgivaren valt att inte belöna i den individuella lönesättningen förlovade land. Trofast förvisad om att de ändå lojalt kommet att ställa upp och därför behöver de inte ”belönas”.
Som lite kuriosa: I USA så finns det en federal etisk kod som gäller för alla statstjänstemän. Koden inleds med föreskriften, att ”Varje offentligt anställd skall sätta lojaliteten mot de högsta moraliska principer och landet före lojaliteten mot personer, parti eller myndigheter”. Någon motsvarande kod finns inte i Sverige. Utan här har det förutsatts, av hävd och gammal vana, att det är så statstjänstemän skall fungera. Det är med andra ord dessa kärnmedarbetare vi talar om och som utgör garanten för att det verkligen blir så.”
”Vi anses ju gubevars vara SÅ viktiga att vi har strejkförbud. Det märkliga är ju bara att om vi anses SÅ viktiga för samhällets funktion och överlevnad att vi måste ha strejkförbud (vi är en av de få yrkesgrupper som har det), varför har detta då inte synts eller markerats genom t.ex. våra löner och övriga arbetsvillkor??
Hittills har jag aldrig fått något bra svar av vår käre arbetsgivare, vare sig lokalt eller centralt.
Så ser situationen ut på det Utrikesdepartement som sägs utgöra en så viktig del av vårt värn av Sverige och våra relationer med omvärlden.”
Och situationen har bara blivit värre sedan dess.
Ex. det nya sjukvårdsförsäkringen utomlands, som mycket brådstörtat infördes utan förvarning den 27 april i år och skulle börja gälla den 1 maj. DVS. 3 DAGARS FÖRVARNING FÖR ETT HELT NYTT SJUKVÅRDS FÖRSÄKRINGSSYSTEM, där personalen kan få ligga ute med mycket stora sjukvårdskostnader innan de får ersättning.
Undrar hur svenska folket skulle reagera om reageringen plötsligt beslöt att slopa försäkringskassan och hela sjukvårdssystemet och införa ett helt nytt system 3 dagar senare? Och där man får betala sjukvårdskostnaderna direkt och kontant för att först LÅNGT senare få ersättning.
En vanlig svensk familj, där den ena partnern jobbar åt UD utomlands förutsätts alltså att ha en stor kontant buffert för att betala sina sjukvårdskostnader.
Intressant grepp av ”välfärdslandet” Sverige. Vi är i praktiken tillbaks till det gamla ”feodala” UD där bara adel och rika borgare kunde jobba eftersom man inte fick någon riktig lön utan det var äran att få jobba där som räknades. Och man förväntades leva på sina tillgångar.
(Vid första världskrigets slut så var ca 50% av UD personal adliga, strax före andra världskriget var siffran omkring 30%).
Skillnaden numera är att det är en POLITISK adel som sitter på alla stolar samtidigt.
Och det här är inget ”gnäll” från champagnepimplande stroppar utan en beskrivning av TOTALT ORIMLIGA ARBETSVILLKOR för duktiga och kompetenta människor med familjer som valt att tjänstgöra i UD för att främja och ta till vara Sveriges intressen.
Och jodå, det finns inkompetenta personer på UD också, liksom över allt annars i Sverige. Både på ”höga” och ”låga” positioner. Och där dessa personer har bidragit till denna förvrängda bild som råder om UD och arbetsvillkoren där. Vilket har fått till följd att mycket allvarlig kritik av arbetsmiljö och arbetsvillkor kan lätt avfärdas som ”tjafs” och ”gnäll” från privilegierade personer.
Och ingenting kan vara längre från sanningen. För att det finns några pellejönsar så skall inte en hel yrkeskår drabbas av fördomar och förakt. Och där absurda arbetsvillkor och förhållanden (sett med vanliga svenska ögon) kan negligeras i trygg förevisning om att INGEN bryr sig.
Som någon så träffsäkert skrev: ”Bildt ägnar ingen uppmärksamhet åt den förvaltning, utrikesdepartementet, han är chef för. UD har istället blivit utrikesministern rundningsmärke”.
Jo, det finns faktiskt en person som har varit värre om någon undrar – Ola Ullsten (1979-82). Han var TOTALT ointresserad av ALLT som hade med departementet och den faktiska skötseln av myndigheten att göra och med ALLA dessa människor som arbetade där.
I EU:s nya utrikestjänst EEAS (the European External Action Service) så kommer antalet tjänster (och inflytandet) att fördelas mellan medlemsstaterna beroende delvis på fördelningsnyckeln till EU-budgeten. Sverige bidrar med ungefär 2,5-2,7% (varierar lite från år till år).
Det innebär att Sverige kan bidra med omkring 5-7 tjänstemän.
Och vilket inflytande kommer Sverige att få med dessa ca 2,6% när det finns drakar som Frankrike, Tyskland och Storbritannien som är vana att bestämma och få sin vilja igenom.
Tillkommer sedan alla halv och små drakar som Italien, Spanien, Polen etc.
Tror någon att EEAS kommer att tillvarata svenska intressen med de faktiska styrkeförhållanden som råder?
I Sveriges riksdag så måste man ha 4% för att överhuvudtaget komma in.
Kan någon nämna någon politisk församling (kommun, landsting, riksdag, partier etc.) där en grupp på ca 2,6 % har något som helst inflytande över någonting?
Än mindre har kommit in över spärrarna till dessa politiska organ?
Jag skall sluta här. Jag kunde fortsätta och ge ett otal exempel både ute och hemma på det som jag bara som hastigast har nämnt här ovan. Och mycket sorgset konstatera att den kompetenta personal och deras familjer som sägs utgöra ett första värn av Sverige (då vi numera inte har ett försvar som kan försvara Sveriges territorium), och sägs vara så viktiga för våra relationer och utrikeshandel, i många fall behandlas som skit.
Eller för att citera socialdemokraternas motion 2009/10:U340
”anför Socialdemokraterna att Sveriges representation utomlands är en viktig fråga för vår utrikes-, bistånds- och näringspolitik. Sverige måste ha en väl rustad utrikesförvaltning både på Utrikesdepartementet i Stockholm och på plats ute i världen för att kunna förstå politiska, ekonomiska och kulturella trender och för att kunna upprätthålla relationer som ligger till grund för samarbete på en mängd viktiga områden.”
”Och dokumentet som DN tagit del av visar att den nya chefen för EU:s gemensamma utrikes- och säkerhetspolitik blir en tung och självständig maktspelare i Bryssel som styr över sin egen budget och sin egen personal.
Utrikestjänsten ”ska vara en avdelning av sui generis-karaktär (unik till sin karaktär), skild från kommissionen och rådssekretariatet. Den bör ha autonomi när det gäller sin administrativa budget och sin personalhantering”, heter det i dokumentet.
Varken EU-kommissionen eller EU-parlamentet får inflytande över denna nya maktbastion.”
“The Lisbon treaty will change the way the EU conducts its foreign policy, both on the top level and on the ground.
The Treaty of Lisbon will reshape the European Union’s institutional architecture for foreign policy from top to bottom. The top – a new-styled high representative for foreign affairs and security policy – is well-defined in the treaty. It is far better defined than the other senior position that the treaty creates, a president of the European Council.
The bottom – a new European diplomatic corps – is left in large part up to the new foreign policy chief, who early in his tenure is to propose to member states the details of its role and functioning. Increased authority The Lisbon treaty hands the new high representative considerable authority. It adds the function of vice-president of the European Commission in charge of external relations to the existing portfolio of the current high representative, Javier Solana, who oversees the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) from the Council of Ministers secretariat.
He – or she – will also chair the monthly meetings of member states’ foreign ministers, replacing the foreign minister of the country holding the EU’s rotating presidency, the current arrangement.
Through this personal union of functions that are currently split between the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, the treaty aims to overcome some of the debilitating divisions between the two institutions that have hampered the EU’s foreign policy in past years. The development of the CFSP over the past ten years has outpaced the growth of co-ordination mechanisms in Brussels, although conditions on the ground often look less grim thanks to ad-hoc arrangements. The same applies to the EU’s military and civilian missions (13 at present, compared with none in 2002).
Double-hatting
The ‘double-hatting’ of the new high representative, which anchors the function both in the Commission and the Council of Ministers, is designed to address a problem that became evident years ago – a lack of strategic coherence between foreign policies driven by the Commission and by the member states.
In theory, the division between the two services is straightforward. The Commission handles routine policies towards third countries – enlargement, neighbourhood relations, trade, development assistance, humanitarian aid and so forth – while the high representative deals with security challenges, especially those that require a crisis response.
In practice, the two have frequently been at odds over who should do what, both in the field and at the policy-making level. Bernard Kouchner, France’s foreign minister, restated the problem before the French National Assembly last week (14 October) when he told parliamentarians that the EU’s activities in Afghanistan were “too dispersed between the Commission, the EU’s special representative and member states”. This, Kouchner said, prevented the EU from exercising its political leadership. “The Treaty of Lisbon,” he concluded, “will help us take our rightful place.”
Autonomous external service
At the local level, trial-runs of double-hatting have been undertaken in Macedonia and towards the African Union. These pilot projects are perhaps best seen as a precursor of the Lisbon treaty’s other main innovation in foreign policy – the European External Action Service (EEAS). The new service, which is to be set up as a body with autonomy from both the Council and the Commission, is to “assist” the high representative in fulfilling his mandate, according to the treaty, and is to draw its staff from member states, the Council and Commission. The main outlines of the EEAS are currently being debated. Its scope, status, financing and staffing are all up for negotiation because of the Lisbon treaty’s vagueness. The travails of ratifying the treaty led to an unhelpful secrecy about anything to do with the EEAS – policymakers in Brussels did not want to be perceived as taking ratification of the treaty for granted, for fear of alienating those in Ireland who were yet to vote in a second referendum.
After the Irish ‘Yes’ vote, some of this secrecy has now been lifted and the EU is now trying to make up for lost time and get the EEAS up and running. But the sense of haste and improvisation is less than ideal for laying the foundations of the EU’s new foreign policy. “
Member states’ security ambassadors, who meet in the Political and Security Committee (PSC), will meet under the chairmanship of a representative of the foreign policy chief, that is, a senior official of the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU’s diplomat corps established under Lisbon.
The remit of the EEAS, whose exact set-up will be proposed by the high representative within a month of taking office and endorsed by EU leaders by next April, appears to have determined member states’ agreement, reached last month, on who should be in charge of which working groups. Nearly 40 working groups in the field of external relations prepare the Council’s work.
Member states have agreed that working groups in the field of trade and development will continue to be chaired by the EU’s rotating presidency, together with a few other groups including those on terrorism, international law and consular affairs.
By contrast, working groups on geographic areas, on most thematic areas such as non-proliferation or human rights, and on matters of security and defence will be chaired by an EEAS official representing the foreign policy chief. Even this second group of working parties, however, will continue to be chaired by the rotating presidency for a transition period – yet to be determined – of either six or 12 months.
The rules of procedure of the Council of Ministers will need to be adapted to reflect these changes.”
Biståndsminister Gunilla Carlsson har kallat till ett seminarium den 19 november med titeln: Hur ska världen styras?
JAA, DET STÅR FAKTISKT SÅ ORDAGRANT!
Ehh.. En liten försynt fråga, borde man kanske inte FÖRST lära sig att ”styra” och leda regeringskansliet med alla dess departement? Vilket man INTE gör idag. Jag vet, jag jobbar där och jag ser lysande pedagogiska exempel varje dag på hur man INTE skall leda och styra ett regeringskansli.
Och behandla sina medarbetare.
Därefter så kanske det vore klädsamt om de klarade av att styra och leda Sverige på ett någorlunda vettigt sätt. Vilket de inte gör. Bara ett litet, litet exempel – FRA lagen.
INNAN man går ut och TALAR OM FÖR VÄRLDEN HUR DEN BORDE STYRAS.
Man vet inte om man skall skratta eller gråta åt denna så totalt naiva och typiskt svenska beskäftiga besserwisser attityd.
En annan eminent deltagare i detta seminarium som är avsett att sprida civilisationens ljus till ”infödingarna” är Jan O Karlsson (S), f.d. Politiskt sakkunnig, biståndsminister och migrationsminister, EU Politruk m.m.
Ni vet han som ordnade stora privata fester och sedan drog av dem på skatten. Och som tack för 5 ½ års EU ”arbete” fick ett blygsamt SKATTEFRI avgångsvederlag från EU på 80 000 kr i månaden (plus pension). Plus full statsråds lön (då 43 000 kronor i månaden EFTER skatt) m.m.
Han har även bidragit med sådana odödliga citat som: ”Jag har svårt att intellektuellt ta ställning till frågan, så jag tar istället svaret på förra frågan en gång till.” Och ”Det får inte handla om någon inställning att hjälpa negrer.”
Han var ledamot av Europeiska revisionsrätten 1995-2001, (ordförande 1999-2001). Under dessa år försnillades åtskilliga miljarder euros (vi pratar om sisådär 50-60 miljarder kr) av biståndsmedel och projektpengar etc. Men inget av detta klarades upp av revisionsrätten eller fälldes av OLAF.
Den som klarade upp det (åtminstone en liten del) var holländaren Paul van Buitenen som var revisor vid EU.
Ni vet han som avslöjade alla skandaler så att EU Kommissionen tvingades avgå 1999. Och som en konsekvens av detta ädla handlande så fick han sparken, hotades och förföljdes av EU byråkrater.
Ja EU Kommissionen var till och med så ”vänlig” att man betalade rättshjälp åt de EU-tjänstemän som kände sig kränkta, (dvs. att de hade blivit avslöjade med att fiffla), av van Buitenens bok ”Kamp för Europa” som han skrev efteråt och därför stämde honom.
Så går det till i den tjusiga EU världen som den politiska eliten vurmar så för.
Han hade då i flera år försökt den officiella (interna) vägen att påtala alla dessa förskingrade pengar, mutor m.m. till Jan O Karlssons revisionsrätt. Utan något som helst resultat eller reaktion.
Så nog har de ett och annat att lära ut till världen. Men jag vet inte om det var ”det” som var tanken?
En liten betraktelse över regeringskansliets lönepolitik så här inför domssöndagen. På den tiden det begav sig och en ung person började på UD så var det reglerade befordringsgång som gällde.
Dvs. det var lönegrader och löneklasser som gällde och man flyttades med bestämda tidsintervaller upp i dessa klasser och grader. Och avancerade man eller fick nya mera avancerade arbetsuppgifter så fick man som regel någon eller några lönegraders påslag.
En av nackdelarna med systemet var ju att man bara räknade statliga ”meriter/tid” så även om man hade bra privat erfarenhet så var det inget som tillgodoräknades en utan man hamnade längst ner i den lönegrad man placerades i.
En av de stora fördelarna (sett såhär i backspegel och med tanke på den utveckling som blev), var att man var säker på sin löneutveckling. Man behövde inte av det skälet oroa sig för om chefen ”gillade” en eller inte. Om man var duglig och skötte sina arbetsuppgifter så satt man ”säkert”.
Sedan kom tankarna om personlig lönesättning efter kompetens och arbetsuppgifter. Och det lät ju bra. För en annan nackdel med det gamla systemet var ju att om man visade framfötterna och var driftig så märkte man ju inte mycket av detta i lönekuvertet.
Föga anade man då vad som komma skulle. Jo, nog blev det individuell lönesättning alltid! Dvs. chefens gunstlingar och favoriter stack iväg som en raket vad det gäller löneutvecklingen. Däremot kärnan av duktiga medarbetare, framför allt sådana med lång erfarenhet och stor kompetens, och som alltid (dumt nog som det har visat sig) har ställt upp då det har behövts av en eller annan anledning.
Det är denna kärna av medarbetare som är ryggraden i all verksamhet i varje departement. De kan ”hantverket” utan och innan, lagar etc. och de är en grundförutsättning för den offentliga verksamhetens oförvitlighet. Kort sagt Sveriges fortlevnad som rättsstat.
Det är dessa personer som arbetsgivaren valt att inte belöna i den individuella lönesättningen förlovade land. Trofast förvisad om att de ändå lojalt kommet att ställa upp och därför behöver de inte ”belönas”.
Som lite kuriosa: I USA så finns det en federal etisk kod som gäller för alla statstjänstemän. Koden inleds med föreskriften, att ”Varje offentligt anställd skall sätta lojaliteten mot de högsta moraliska principer och landet före lojaliteten mot personer, parti eller myndigheter”. Någon motsvarande kod finns inte i Sverige. Utan här har det förutsatts, av hävd och gammal vana, att det är så statstjänstemän skall fungera. Det är med andra ord dessa kärnmedarbetare vi talar om och som utgör garanten för att det verkligen blir så.
Det finns naturligtvis undantag med bra chefer som förstått betydelsen av, och vikten med, dessa ”kärnmedarbetare”. Men de utgör tyvärr fortfarande ett undantag i organisationen.
Till slut gick det så lång att UD: s personalavdelning helt kapitulerade inför alla chefer (hög som låg) och överlät ALLT urval av personal till dessa. Man blev med andra ord bara ett transportkompani.
Det har man nu, sent om sider kommit till insikt om, och erkänt att det gått för långt och börjat prata om att göra något åt det hela. Men det är så dags nu när man överlämnat ALL makt och ansvar över personalutnämningar till cheferna. Och det är en makt som dessa herrar och damer inte i första rasket kommer att släppa ifrån sig. Tänk att kunna handplocka sina favoriter!
Förut så fanns det ju ett litet ”A lag” av ambassadörer som kunde handplocka sina medarbetare. Men merparten fick hålla ”tillgodo” med de personer personalavdelningen bestämt. Och det systemet fungerade ju ganska bra eftersom personalen oftast hade bred erfarenhet (generalist) och stor kompetens från flera olika verksamhetsdelar och hade jobbat både ute och hemma. Till saken hör också att personalavdelningen på den tiden hade någorlunda koll på personalen och visste vem du var i de flesta fall.
Vilket man inte vet nu.
Inte för att jag på något sätt vill framställa det gamla systemet som perfekt eller helt rättvist. Så var det naturligtvis inte. Det begicks många misstag och personal hanterades fel på många sätt. Det var kunskap och färdigheter som inte alls togs till vara. Personer kunde t.ex. fördjupa sig på en viss inriktning bara för att strax därpå placeras någon helt annan stans (som oftast hade så lite som möjligt att göra med den inriktning man hade). Så nog förekom det ett stort mått av personal och resursslöseri.
Men i jämförelse med det system som blev och som vi har idag så innebar det gamla systemet i all sin inperfection ändå ett visst mått av logik och stabilitet jämfört med det godtycke som råder idag. Arbetsgivaren följde ju åtminstone VISSA regler och hade åtminstone en VISS logik i sina tankar om placering och utveckling.
Nu är det ju så att arbetsgivaren är enväldig i sitt beslut och kan följaktligen fatta vilka beslut han/hon vill. Vilket arbetsgivaren också har gjort många gånger. De fackliga möjligheterna består styvende och sist i att man kan fördröja ett beslut som man anser fel. Inget annat. Och detta trotts allt halabalo som var kring MBL etc.
Jag vet. Jag var där. Jag var en av dem som införde MBL i regeringskansliet från facket sida och deltog i alla förhandlingar. Och blev mycket snabbt tagen ur min MBL ufori och varse att om arbetsgivaren VILL något så blir det SÅ oavsett vilka paragrafer facket åberopar. Och det kan gå väldigt fort när arbetsgivaren så vill. Likaså kan det gå väääldigt långsamt när det passar arbetsgivaren och det är inte mycket facket kan sätta emot.
Framförallt då de centrala fackliga organisationerna nästan aldrig är villiga att ta frågan till t.ex. arbetsdomstolen. Det var många gånger (på den tiden) vi ville driva frågan till central förhandling och vidare men vi fick nej av vårt centrala förbund.
Nå, nu var ju MBL inte bara Potemkin kulisser utan innehöll verkliga förbättringar vad det gäller arbetsgivarens skyldigheter att informera samt en utökad förhandlingsrätt. Allt detta var naturligtvis bra.
Vi anses ju gubevars vara SÅ viktiga att vi har strejkförbud. Det märkliga är ju bara att om vi anses SÅ viktiga för samhällets funktion och överlevnad att vi måste ha strejkförbud (vi är en av de få yrkesgrupper som har det), varför har detta då inte synts eller markerats genom t.ex. våra löner och övriga arbetsvillkor??
Hittills har jag aldrig fått något bra svar av vår käre arbetsgivare, vare sig lokalt eller centralt.
Så ser situationen ut på det Utrikesdepartement som sägs utgöra en så viktig del av vårt värn av Sverige och våra relationer med omvärlden.
Se det var en värdig domssöndags berättelse så här i slutet av kyrkoåret.
Detta är en återpublicering av det inlägg jag gjorde på Carl Bildt blogg den 30 oktober. Och varför då? Jo för att denna struntsak visar i en ögonblicksbild tillståndet i förvaltningen. En förvaltning som schabblar med små, enkla administrativa ärenden är inte heller i stånd att agera när det gäller viktigare frågor. Om man inte kan krypa kan man heller inte gå – så enkelt är det. Så denna lilla sak blir ett symptom på något viktigare.(more…)
UD/RK Samhälls Debatt 