Monday 29 November 2010

European Court of Human Rights - some basics

The European Court of Human Rights’ expenditure is borne by the Council of Europe, whose budget is financed by contributions from member States in accordance with scales based on population and GDP. For 2010 the Court’s budget amounts to just over 58 million euros.

The European Convention on Human Rights is an international treaty which only member States of the Council of Europe may sign.

The Convention, which establishes the Court and lays down how it is to function, contains a list of the rights and guarantees which the States have undertaken to respect.

Domestic courts have to apply the Convention otherwise, in the event of complaints by individuals about failure to protect their rights, the European Court of Human Rights would find against the State.

The judges are elected by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from lists of three candidates proposed by each State.

Judgements finding violations are binding on the States concerned and they are obliged to execute them. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe monitors the execution of judgements.

Although the Council of Europe and the European Union now both share a common flag and an anthem, their roles, functions and aims are quite distinct.

The Council of Europe is an intergovernmental organisation which today has 47 member states. It is concerned primarily with protecting human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

The European Union currently has 27 members that have delegated some of their sovereignty so that decisions on specific matters of joint interest can be made democratically at European level.

No country has ever joined the European Union (EU) without first belonging to the Council of Europe.

The Council of Europe is not to be confused with the European Council which is a regular meeting (at least twice a year) of the heads of state or government from the member states of the European Union for the purpose of planning Union policy.


The Council of Europe: An Overview http://bit.ly/fM299a
European Court of Human Rights : Questions and Answers http://bit.ly/fJ5rIX
The Council of Europe in brief  - Do not get confused http://bit.ly/9D2waN (OK Mummy)


Council of Europe flag















EU flag






All facets of the same EU coin. http://bit.ly/hWoFXV

Wednesday 24 November 2010

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me



Initiatives such as www.the-eu-and-me.org.uk site and 'Europe Direct' exist only because we are made to pay for it - it is easy to spend our taxes.

These are not in place to 'help' the EU public, it is only, cynically, to make the EU public 'feel' as thought the EU is useful and connect with it.

This is addressing an apparent weakness of the EU: near anybody with at least half-a-brain thinks it is a useless waste of our money - and it is.

So the issue is addressed with a marketing campaign - which is the definition of propaganda & how a public is brainwashed. Simple.

Tuesday 23 November 2010

Boot on Right Foot

Civil liberties stand as a defence from whatever future holds. To assure an enduringly free society the balance must always be; government must trust people and not demand legislation that requires the people to trust government.



New Open Europe briefing: What will the Irish bail-out actually solve?

22 November 2010  Open Europe
The Irish government yesterday announced that it would seek a bail-out from the EU and the IMF amid concerns over Ireland's banks and public finances.
Open Europe has today published a briefing looking at the different bail-out options on the table, arguing that none of them will solve the fundamental problems of either Ireland or the eurozone as a whole - although they can buy Ireland valuable time.

Open Europe's Director Mats Persson said:
"The real problem Ireland and other weaker eurozone economies are facing is how to regain competitiveness once stuck inside a monetary union, without the option of currency devaluation at their disposal. Temporary loans or stricter budget rules will do very little to solve this problem."

"A healthy Irish economy is clearly in the UK's interests but while there's a case for granting bilateral assistance to Ireland, any involvement in an EU-led bail-out completely lacks democratic legitimacy in the UK, particularly as such a bailout is legally questionable in the first place."

"In the absence of regained growth and competitiveness in Ireland and elsewhere, Britain will remain exposed to shaky eurozone economies and the single currency's inherent flaws in future. The UK government should now design an economic policy which assumes that the eurozone is unsustainable and work with EU partners to find a more viable monetary arrangement for Europe."

To read the briefing click here: http://www.openeurope.org.uk/research/irelandbailout.pdf

Key points
· Ireland's problems - while owing to several factors - have been locked in by the loss of competitiveness arising from its EMU membership. Since joining the eurozone, Ireland has lost over 27% in competitiveness relative to Germany, according to some measures. In many ways, the Irish debt bubble is a symptom rather than the cause of the real problem.

· Ireland is clearly in a better position to rebound from the current problems than Greece and Portugal, due to its relatively open economy. However, there are five reasons why a one-off bailout for Ireland will not solve the eurozone's problems - although it could buy Ireland some valuable time:

1. Temporary loans or greater budget discipline across the eurozone will do very little to help countries such as Greece, Ireland or Portugal regain competitiveness, the main problem these countries face.

2. In essence, what was asked of Greece, and soon Ireland, is two-thirds of a traditional IMF package - cuts in expenditure and increased taxes. However, the third, vital ingredient - currency depreciation - isn't permitted within a single currency. Instead, currency devaluation has to be replaced by so-called "internal depreciation", meaning even more squeezes to jobs and wages which aren't politically or socially affordable.

3. The ECB is likely to continue to pursue a German-style monetary policy, leading to an undervalued currency for Germany (fuelling German export-led growth) but an equally overvalued currency for the weaker economies such as Portugal and Spain (although Ireland itself could be helped by a weaker euro). This, in turn, locks in a multi-speed eurozone, with the same type of tensions we've seen over the last year coming to the fore again in future.
4. The politics of a loan bail-out and stronger supranational budget rules are unsustainable. The lending countries, most importantly Germany, can only sell a de facto debt union to their electorates if it comes with strict rules and terms. But such terms imposed from the outside seriously undermine the ability of the borrowing countries to democratically govern themselves.

5. The role currently being played by the ECB is untenable, both for political and economic reasons:

a) Politically, the ECB's decision back in May to start buying 'junk' government bonds from the secondary market has compromised its independence - which the Germans were promised would never happen. A bailout using loan guarantees from other EU states may allow the ECB to withdraw its emergency funding for now, but without a long-term solution the ECB is likely to be called on again to prop up ailing states.

b) Economically, the situation is unsustainable as well. The Eurosystem of eurozone central banks that underpins the ECB is leveraged 24 times[1], while the average hedge fund is only leveraged 3 to 4 times. A fall in assets of only a few percent would wipe out the ECB's reserves, which could lead to the ECB itself being in need of a "bail-out".

· There are no obvious long-term solutions that do not come with huge political and economic costs. The dilemma facing the eurozone remains whether it is to become a fully fledged United States-style fiscal and therefore political union with huge continuous transfers from the German-led bloc to those on the periphery - which would inflict serious damage on the German economy; or prepare for a messy divorce possibly in the form of a two-tier euro and even some countries exiting altogether.

· Germany is keen on a bail-out package for Ireland, as it wants to decrease Ireland's dependency on the ECB, replacing the current support measures with government-backed loans, which can be linked to specific demands, such as a restructuring of the banks or changes to the tax system. The ECB's generous liquidity supply also goes against the 'hard currency' philosophy that Germany was promised when giving up the Deutschemark in the 1990s and strikes to the heart of worries that the ECB is becoming a "bad bank" itself.

· The UK is hugely exposed to Irish banks and debts. However, the decision on whether the UK is involved in a bailout is largely out of the UK Government's hands because the EU bailout fund, partly underwritten by British taxpayers, can be activated by majority voting, meaning that Britain could be outvoted. This means that the EU rescue mechanism of which the UK is part completely lacks democratic legitimacy in Britain. The UK is also likely to provide bilateral support and contribute through its membership of the IMF. Reports suggest that the total amount guaranteed by Britain in an Irish bail-out will be in the area of £7 billion. However, in the absence of regained growth and competitiveness in Ireland, and the other weaker economies in the eurozone, the UK will remain exposed to future failure in EMU.

The Loophole Exploited

Those who have lent excessively, to the point of apparent foolhardiness, can only have done so because they knew, however it turned-out, their bad investments were ultimately indemnified and so protected.



But that was not the game. Not concerned with making bad investments that cause financial collapse and just getting their money back, instead the aim has been to ramp-up such debt and then lend the selfsame sums again required to fund the bailouts themselves. So in doing they create enormous and indefinite national debts held by the bailout nations that can afford to pay and pay such interest as demanded. The people of the EU become tax-slaves to the international bankers.


The loophole exploited is the promise that sovereign states will act as lenders of last resort and behind them the resolve of the member-states of the EU to rally behind the EURO.



This is a win-win; for the bankers, who funded these debts and subsequently will lend the bailouts too, and for the EU/EURO which can only be improbably left to a horrific death or become politically fully incarnated as a result.

The Secret of Oz

The world economy is doomed to spiral downwards until we do 2 things: outlaw government borrowing; 2. outlaw fractional reserve lending. Banks should only be allowed to lend out money they actually have and nations do not have to run up a "National Debt". Remember: It's not what backs the money, it's who controls its quantity

See also item: 'Secrets of the Wizard of Oz'  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7933175.stm

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Monday 22 November 2010

Kate Middleclass and the royal Vindzors

The world belongs to the people and the people must be supreme over governments. Who are these people who think they have a right to reign over us?


Our bodies are our individual property else otherwise, by default, we are slaves. The planet is ours to share with all other people (and natural life) else we are landless peasants and no more than serfs.


Civilisation enables man to exceed nature's maxim of 'winner takes all'.  There is no place for a hereditary oligarchy proportioning to be enshrined by legislated institution.


We have been breed and are trained to accept or even think we 'love' our rulers but this is no more than an illusion.

Monday 15 November 2010

Bread and Jam

The aim of the globalist's agenda is to spread the jar of wealth-jam evenly onto each and every slice of the world's nation-state-loaf.

Whatever economic strife is caused, before this grail is clasped, is a price they are willing for us to pay.

Why? Different groups have different objectives. Some believe the only route to global harmony is a one world government and to reach the aim there must be a common global economy. Others use the afore-mentioned sentiment to help realise their objective of global economic and political domination.

Thursday 4 November 2010

Herd Management Program

Without comprehension of the nature or the facts, the people of the various nation states comprising the EU have long-since been loaded into cattle-trucks (of various guises) and continue on their slow clanking journey to an unwitting destination. The route may be convoluted, obscure, delayed or apparently benign but their fate is their predetermined destiny and a part of this journey has to be that they will never be plainly told where all the tracks eventually head.

Too stupid a herd are people that the manifold benefits perceived for the full integration of old-style nations into continental supra-national unions and further into one omnipotent world governance would simple pass them by. Humans instinct for tribal loyalty and racial grouping would surmount and stifle any reasoned call with the supposed logic for the ultimate formation of a newly ordered single world authority.


And so instead this must be achieved by subterfuge and conniving manipulation. Our so called representatives share various conceptions for the merits of this goal and understand its purported benevolent and altruistic ambition along with the absolute necessity to resist its definition.

By its formation's very nature, that of its being assembled of illiberal covert means, it stands equal opportunity of, when ultimately realised, becoming a manifestation of the ugliness of which it is being born. All resistance will be at best futile and worst deemed necessary to completely oppress.

Wednesday 3 November 2010

WANTED - Somebody to act in the interests of a nation

This government is defiantly becoming one dirty great big disappointment as for having an anti-EU breath in its body.   I was, in reality, expecting no more than we are getting - vigorously shafted.  But, in truth, I did have just a teeny-weeny bit of optomisium.  Do I never learn.  Do we never learn.

Nothing this joker and his fall-guy has done has shown one shard of getting the best out of the EU for the UK.  It is all a sham. 

Depends who is putting who in jail and what is their definition of an offender.

Regarding giving prisoners the vote; I naturally despise everything emanating from the EU by default, but who should decide who can and who cannot vote; the people, the majority, politicians? What is to say the boundaries do not get changed. Maybe people who speed in cars should be banned from voting. Maybe people who have been in jail cannot vote for one year or why not ten years. Who decides where this arbitrary line is drawn?

Better, more durable, is to let everyone of maturity and sound mind vote.  Those languishing in jail may have a better understanding of what it was that got them there in the first place and vote for a better society that helps preclude the spiral of crime. 

Of cause the EU care not who votes and what they vote for since, in the EU, a vote counts diddly-squat anyway.