THE
SPANISH JUDICIAL SYSTEM 1: Well into judge Garzón's book Fango now,
I realise that the system was designed by Robert Mugabe to ensure
that neither he nor any of his mates would ever be successfully
prosecuted for anything. If practice, if not in theory. Elements
include: woefully inadequate resources; changes of court; replacement
of effective judges; and constant attempts to slow down things so
that a statue of limitations comes into play. And then there's the
fact that national and regional politicians - as aforados - have the
right to be tried in certain (superior) courts. Above all this,
there's the constant political pressure through media campaigns. Finally, there's the thousands of presidential pardons granted each
year to those dumb enough to not only get caught but also to hire
lousy lawyers. All in all, something truly more appropriate for
Zimbabwe than a modern European state of law. Not surprisingly, only
32% of Spaniards think their courts functional well. Well, that is surprising, really.
THE
SPANISH JUDICIAL SYSTEM 2: A while ago, a lawyer friend assured me
that an accused person here has the legal right to lie. I was
sceptical but this week the Minister of the interior, no less, told
us that members of the Pujol family - accused of humungous corruption
in Cataluña - have the right not only to defend themselves but also
to lie when doing so. No oath that they're going to tell nothing but
the truth, then. Not that anyone would believe them if there were.
RELIGION 1: I was rather surprised to see a centre-page El País article headed: Religion is not a subject. It could be if it were taught under the history of mythologies or something similar. In which case, the teachers should be selected for academic reasons and not designated by an archbishop. Spain's concordats with the Holy See must end as soon as possible. Of course, these sentiments have been present in Spain for decades but this is the first public attack I can recall.
RELIGION 2: Three Spanish women are to face a court in early 2016, charged with insulting the Catholic religion, or something like that. Perhaps "Provoking discrimination, hate and violence." Click here for the details I'm reluctant to post here. How about "Provoking laughter at the Catholic Church"?
THE MIDDLE
EAST: I believe, though many don't, that ISIS can eventually be
battered out of existence, though with what consequences no one
knows. Against that, I don't believe the West can do much about much
bigger issues that will mean regional warfare for many decades yet:-
1.The fundamental Islamic schism between Shiites (Iran) and Sunnis
(Saudi Arabia), and 2. The sub-schism between the Wahhabi Sunnis and
other Sunni sects. The former has been running for almost 1400 years
but the latter is only 100 or years or so old. It's anyone's guess
what these will yet produce - possibly an Iran-Saudi war - and what
the consequences of developments will be. The sooner we move away
from oil the better. Meanwhile, it's good to know that the running
sore of Israel and Palestine is being rapidly healed. As if.
FINALLY .
. . From a British eurosceptic:-
How a secretive elite created the EU
to build a world government
As the
debate over the forthcoming EU referendum gears up, it would be wise
perhaps to remember how Britain was led into membership in the first
place. It seems to me that most people have little idea why one of
the victors of the Second World War should have become almost
desperate to join this "club". That's a shame, because
answering that question is key to understanding why the EU has gone
so wrong.
Most
students seem to think that Britain was in dire economic straits, and
that the European Economic Community – as it was then called –
provided an economic engine which could revitalise our economy.
Others seem to believe that after the Second World War Britain needed
to recast her geopolitical position away from empire, and towards a
more realistic one at the heart of Europe. Neither of these
arguments, however, makes any sense at all.
The EEC in
the 1960s and 1970s was in no position to regenerate anyone’s
economy. It spent most of its meagre resources on agriculture and
fisheries and had no means or policies to generate economic growth.
When
growth did happen, it did not come from the EU. From Ludwig Erhard's
supply-side reforms in West Germany in 1948 to Thatcher's
privatisation of nationalised industry in the Eighties, European
growth came from reforms introduced by individual countries which
were were copied elsewhere. EU policy has always been either
irrelevant or positively detrimental (as was the case with the euro).
Nor did
British growth ever really lag behind Europe's. Sometimes it surged
ahead. In the 1950s Western Europe had a growth rate of 3.5 per cent;
in the 1960s, it was 4.5 per cent. But in 1959, when Harold Macmillan
took office, the real annual growth rate of British GDP, according to
the Office of National Statistics, was almost 6 per cent. It was
again almost 6 per cent when de Gaulle vetoed our first application
to join the EEC in 1963.
In 1973,
when we entered the EEC, our annual national growth rate in real
terms was a record 7.4 per cent. The present Chancellor would die for
such figures. So the economic basket-case argument doesn’t work.
What about
geopolitics? What argument in the cold light of hindsight could have
been so compelling as to make us kick our Second-World-War
Commonwealth allies in the teeth to join a combination of Belgium,
the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Germany and Italy?
Four of
these countries held no international weight whatsoever. Germany was
occupied and divided. France, meanwhile, had lost one colonial war in
Vietnam and another in Algeria. De Gaulle had come to power to save
the country from civil war. Most realists must surely have regarded
these states as a bunch of losers. De Gaulle, himself a supreme
realist, pointed out that Britain had democratic political
institutions, world trade links, cheap food from the Commonwealth,
and was a global power. Why would it want to enter the EEC?
The answer
is that Harold Macmillan and his closest advisers were part of an
intellectual tradition that saw the salvation of the world in some
form of world government based on regional federations. He was also a
close acquaintance of Jean Monnet, who believed the same. It was
therefore Macmillan who became the representative of the European
federalist movement in the British cabinet.
In a
speech in the House of Commons he even advocated a European Coal and
Steel Community (ECSC) before the real thing had been announced. He
later arranged for a Treaty of Association to be signed between the
UK and the ECSC, and it was he who ensured that a British
representative was sent to the Brussels negotiations following the
Messina Conference, which gave birth to the EEC.
In the
late 1950s he pushed negotiations concerning a European Free Trade
Association towards membership of the EEC. Then, when General de
Gaulle began to turn the EEC into a less federalist body, he took the
risk of submitting a full British membership application in the hope
of frustrating Gaullist ambitions.
His aim,
in alliance with US and European proponents of a federalist world
order, was to frustrate the emerging Franco-German alliance which was
seen as one of French and German nationalism.
Monnet met
secretly with Heath and Macmillan on innumerable occasions to
facilitate British entry. Indeed, he was informed before the British
Parliament of the terms in which the British approach to Europe would
be framed.
Despite
advice from the Lord Chancellor, Lord Kilmuir, that membership would
mean the end of British parliamentary sovereignty, Macmillan
deliberately misled the House of Commons — and practically everyone
else, from Commonwealth statesmen to cabinet colleagues and the
public — that merely minor commercial negotiations were involved.
He even tried to deceive de Gaulle that he was an anti-federalist and
a close friend who would arrange for France, like Britain, to receive
Polaris missiles from the Americans. De Gaulle saw completely through
him and vetoed the British bid to enter.
Macmillan
left Edward Heath to take matters forward, and Heath, along with
Douglas Hurd, arranged — according to the Monnet papers — for the
Tory Party to become a (secret) corporate member of Monnet’s Action
Committee for a United States of Europe.
According
to Monnet’s chief aide and biographer, Francois Duchene, both the
Labour and Liberal Parties later did the same. Meanwhile the Earl of
Gosford, one of Macmillan’s foreign policy ministers in the House
of Lords, actually informed the House that the aim of the
government’s foreign policy was world government.
Monnet’s
Action Committee was also given financial backing by the CIA and the
US State Department. The Anglo-American establishment was now
committed to the creation of a federal United States of Europe.
Today,
this is still the case. Powerful international lobbies are already at
work attempting to prove that any return to democratic
self-government on the part of Britain will spell doom. American
officials have already been primed to state that such a Britain would
be excluded from any free trade deal with the USA and that the world
needs the TTIP trade treaty which is predicated on the survival of
the EU.
Fortunately,
Republican candidates in the USA are becoming Eurosceptics and
magazines there like The National Interest are publishing the case
for Brexit. The international coalition behind Macmillan and Heath
will find things a lot more difficult this time round — especially
given the obvious difficulties of the Eurozone, the failure of EU
migration policy and the lack of any coherent EU security policy.
Most
importantly, having been fooled once, the British public will be much
more difficult to fool again.
Alan Sked
is the original founder of Ukip and professor of International
History at the London School of Economics. He is presently collecting
material for a book he hopes to publish on Britain's experience of
the EU
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