"Could - and should - English win the "language war" in regional integration? NAFTA and EU experience"

Must have been about a year ago when John from Stop Common Purpose UK asked me what I know about the influence of a man named Antonio Gramsci on Communitarian thinking. I was unfamiliar with Gramsci, and planned to look him up sometime later. The next time I saw his name was in Malachai Martin's Keys of This Blood, again I thought I better spend some time looking into this guy's ideas. Now here he is again, this time in a Jean Monnet Working Paper.

Hopefully by now most readers here know that all global-to-local political changes begin with regional trade integration. The EU began as a Soviet idea for a European trade agreement and expanded into a regional government with its own currency and constitution. The EU is held up as the "model" for all other emerging regional unions. And maybe by now most US readers also know that the very idea of regional integration violates our entire constitutional justice system and that if the FBI was doing their job these regional integration activists would be investigated and based upon the abundance of evidence, charged with sedition and treason.

The war is against our sovereignty and existence as an independent nation. Every new regulation and requirement works toward this purpose.

The North American Model Legislature, Querétaro (México), May 30th to June 4th, 2010 http://www.fina-nafi.org/eng/fina/presentation.asp?count=eng

Dear friends of the Jean Monnet Center,

We are pleased to announce the online publication of the thirteenth paper in the 2009 Jean Monnet Working Paper series. We include the abstract of this paper below:

Stephan Sberro, "Could - and should - English win the "language war" in regional integration? NAFTA and EU experience"
(JMWP no. 13/09)

Whereas the linguistic governance of the European Union and its institutions is the object of a heated political debate, there is no such problem yet in North America. This disregard for a "linguistic balance of power" is likely to be temporary. In the case of a deepening in North American Integration such a political debate is bound to emerge. In such case the experience of the ongoing debate in Europe could be invaluable.

It is a highly political as well as a highly technical debate which has not much to do with purely linguistic considerations and more with political ones. Although it is often considered as inevitable, choosing English as the only regional communication language in Europe or North America is neither neutral nor costless.

To frame these discussions, the notion of "soft power" was developed both in the United States and in Europe, although with different approaches. As theorized by Joseph Nye, "soft power" describes the ability of a State to influence directly or indirectly the behaviour or the interests of other actors through cultural or ideological means.

These ideas are an adaptation in International Relations of A. Gramsci's notion of hegemony where dominant ideas are particularly powerful because they are assumed as implicit aspects of a more explicit ideology. It is also related to P. Bourdieu's ideas about the symbolic value and thus domination of one particular language over others, based on misrecognition (méconnaissance).

To us, language is the most concrete, measurable and should we say scientific way to observe the diffusion of soft power. In this regard, the main focus will be made in three languages that can still be an instrument of power in international relations: English, Spanish and French.

Is a regional linguistic regime desirable and possible in North America? Is the European linguistic policy successful and is it a useful reference? These are the questions we shall consider in this article.

We invite you to access this Working Paper on the Jean Monnet Center website at www.jeanmonnetprogram.org. (all external links and red font added by me, N.R.)

Guess it's time to get started:
http://www.internationalgramscisociety.org/

North American Integration? As in NAU? So it wasn't just a silly conspiracy theory after all?

"The North American Integration and Development Center was created to conduct ongoing research concerning North American integration and to assist communities and governments with policies and investment projects for sustainable and equitable development across borders."
http://naid.sppsr.ucla.edu/

"The governments of Canada, the United States, and Mexico face thorny challenges as they decide whether and how to accelerate smooth, and institutionalize the integration process. Pastor, Rozenthal, and Beatty encourage greater dialogue among the three governments and their citizens, as well as more systematic thinking among policymakers and citizens about the promise and challenges of further North American integration." The Future of North American Integration Beyond NAFTA, Trade, Global Economics, Peter Hakim and Robert E. Litan, eds., Brookings Institution Press 2002 c. 129pp.

EU and UN objectives in Romania EXACTLY the same as in the US?

Is EU redevelopment actually harming small farmers and changing the face of Romania's historical landscape? http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,49058,85,00.html

Here's the UN fact sheet about Romania's Local Agenda 21 Plan
http://www.un.org/esa/agenda21/natlinfo/countr/romania/eco.htm

Here's the UN expansion plans for Local Agenda 21 in Romania:

Objectives

1. To incorporate sustainable development principles into national and local strategies and action plans.

2. To create bottom-up links between national development priorities and local needs in the framework of a triple partnership between local government/business and community/citizens.

3. To enhance the local and regional capabilities for structural funds absorption.

4. To increase strategic planning capabilities.

5. To foster a participatory and multi-sectoral development planning process.

6. To achieve a new communication and organizational culture aimed at increased performances.

Achievements & Expected Results

1) To draft local plans for sustainable development of 35 Romanian territorial units.

2) To establish institutionalised mechanisms for regular consultations between local governments and CSOs on economic, social and environmental policies and programmes.

3) To increase capacity of local and county governments to identify, plan local development projects.

4) To improve the capacity of local and county governments to access structural funds.

http://www.undp.ro/projects.php?project_id=35

Can't help ut wonder how many Romanians voted for adoption of LA 21, and how many were aware that Romania's ascension into the EU placed the entire country under the new global principles for communitarian law http://laws.uaic.ro/default.php?t=site&pgid=205. It's fairly easy to find attorneys in Romania who studied it http://madalina-antonescu.eu/, but impossible to find anything to show me their new LA21 "triple partnership" idea is any different than the public private partnerships with the Third Sector in the US. Wouldn't it be interesting to see what the Romanians would do to their latest leadership if the truth ever gets out that EU-LA21 communitarian sustainable development is a scam even bigger than communism ever was?

Communitarian Law is a one year post graduate program at the University of Oradea http://www.ceebd.co.uk/ceeed/un/rom/ro034006.htm

Romania's Accession to the EU from a very interesting perspective, and again, this paper proves beyond a doubt what role the communitarian aquis plays in integration http://knol.google.com/k/romania-s-accession-to-the-european-union

Here's some very interesting papers published by university professors, including one that defends Hegelian Law http://www.juridica-danubius.ro/ar6/en. Apparently grants are called "communitarian incomes" and "communitarian resources" in Romania, and there are "communitarian depositions" and "communitarian institutions" too. And of course they use the phrase "communitarian integration" just like every other EU member state. One paper begins: "

The harmonisation of the national legislation with the communitarian one, being an essential component in the process of Romania ’s integration in the European Union, imposed an approach of the new principles and rules even in the communitarian area. New regulations concerning the exertion of the right of free circulation and residence within the territory of Member States by EU citizens and members of their families, the right of permanent residence within the territory of Member States by EU citizens and members of their families, and the limits set for the above rights for reasons of public order, public safety or public health."

The BRussells Tribunal

What a suprise. Bertrand Russell formed an International War Crimes Tribunal to combat "American" wars of aggression.

I guess the fact that Russell was also a founder of the "slow march through American institutions" Fabian Society (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUrussell.htm) is supposed to be irrelevant. But hey. What if it was Emma Goldman, a Fabian, who trained McKinley's assassin in 1901? What if the Fabians were the ones who induced Wilson to enter WWI in 1917? What if the Fabians were the ones to introduce America to Fabian schooling after they started WWII in 1933? What if the Fabians' actual mission statement was to spread lies and propaganda to help ensure their plans for a global government? What if the Fabians infiltrated or founded American suffragists? What if the Fabians had a prominent role in the first Zionist war against the Arabs in 1947? Are Fabian Socialism and Zionism compatible political ideologies? They do share the same ultimate goal.

What if the founder of the Communitarian Network is also a Fabian? Does this tie into my renewed interest in their "spirituality"? Well, Annie Bessant and Alice Bailey were Fabians and Theosophists, so yes, it does.

http://www.brusselstribunal.org/

MEMBERS OF THE BRUSSELLS TRIBUNAL
Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, Eduardo Galeano, Noam Chomsky, José Saramago, Margarita Papandreou, Harold Pinter (d.2008), François Houtart, Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Howard Zinn, Edward S. Herman, John Pilger, Michel Chossudovsky, Michael Parenti, Samir Amin, Cindy Sheehan, Denis Halliday, Hans von Sponeck, Hana Al Bayaty, Lieven De Cauter, Jean Bricmont, Sabah Al-Mukhtar, Lucas Catherine, Gideon Polya, Francis A. Boyle, Cynthia McKinney, Socorro Gomes, James Petras, Souad Al-Azzawi, Immanuel Wallerstein, Imad Khadduri, Anne Morelli, William Blum, Dahr Jamail, Saad Jawad, Michel Collon, Sr Anne Montgomery RSCJ, Sami Zemni, David Swanson, Ian Douglas, Curtis Doebbler, Karen Parker, Patrick Deboosere, Pierre Galand, Haifa Zangana, Herman De Ley, Dirk Adriaensens, Fouad Elhage, Max Fuller, Ward Treunen, Hana Ibrahim, Serene Assir, Dirk Tuypens, Bert De Belder, Felicity Arbuthnot, Hugo Wanner, Sarah Meyer and many others {boldface mine}

Why are there so many familiar names on this list? Because I'm supposed to know and put my trust in them? Chossodovsky is one of the leading globalist researchers in the world outside mainstream. I link to his site from here. Howard Zinn wrote the tell-all book on American history, and craftily left out the fact that his "text" was a compeltely Marxist viewpoint, designed to teach disrespect for our founding legal system, which was the only barrier to Marxism we had. How fitting that mother of a sacrificial lamb, Cindy Sheehan belongs to this group. And McKinney the open communist ... man.. what's her role in all this?

The bottom line is THIS group represents the legitimate court "opposition" to the "war machine." If the war machine had no high ranking opposition, would it be as successful at pushing us into wars and ultimately toward a Hegelian solution? If there was no phony Fabian led opposition to the war machine, would there arise LEGITIMATE opposition, reasonable and factual based, that would not lead to a Fabian Hegelian solution?

Jeff has opened up another area I missed in his comments that are really opening my eyes today to how many blinders I still have up. Do the communitarians believe their groups are endowed with rights from God, as we believe (and our law supports) that individuals are? I never looked for the answer to that, because I never asked the question.

Long live the fighting Irish spirit! A thousand thanks to the anticommunitarians in Ireland, Portugul, Germany, UK, Canada, Australia, France, Netherlands, Italy and the Chech Republic! You are NOT alone and you also have allies in the USA (us!), Indonesia, South Pacific, South and Central America and everywhere else the "healthy instincts of the plain man" survive. Let's give EVERYONE in the world the chance to vote on national subordination to international communitarian injustice! Send global communitarians the message that NO means NO!

Stop Communitarian Laws.
The Country You Save May Be Your Own.

Despite saying No, Irish are not alone

Sunday July 06 2008

THE FICTION that the other 26 countries of the EU watched in dismay as Ireland rejected the Lisbon treaty is just that -- a piece of fiction.

The UK voters would have done much the same, only more so, had they been given the chance. It was because the Blair government was saved by the French and Dutch referenda on the EU constitution that they were able to wriggle out of their election manifesto to have a referendum, claiming speciously that the Lisbon treaty was a mere tidying-up exercise and nothing like the Constitution. Everybody from the EU Constitution's creator, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, downwards knows that this is arrant nonsense.

So the failure to bring the revised "constitution" into being can this time be lain at the Irish door. For a second time the Brits have had a let-off.

Or have they? There is a growing feeling in continental Europe that the ungrateful Irish should be told, as they were after Nice, that they had better think again or be condemned to the slow lane in a two-speed Europe.

The bullying will start in earnest in the autumn. Irish ministers have inevitably pronounced the mantra "the people have spoken", but they will be told that that is no excuse.

The package to be put to the Irish voters in say, a year's time, can already be discerned. First, some deal will be done to save the Irish commissioner.

Most UK voters are mystified as to why the Irish care so much about retaining "their" commissioner. (In theory, all EU commissioners pledge themselves to operate as Europeans, not nationals of a member state; in practice they tend to regard themselves as extensions or outposts of their national Embassy.) But as I heard many times when I was UK Ambassador in Dublin, the big countries have other ways of exercising their power and influence in the EU. The smalls rely on the Commission and their national commissioner in particular.

Retaining the national commissioner for every nation state is of course not sensible for the efficient working of the Commission, which is already overblown -- and what happens when the next enlargement takes place? But it can probably be handled as a "temporary" derogation from the Lisbon treaty to avoid everyone being asked to vote on the revised treaty again.

Then we shall probably see a series of protocols which will spell out what the Lisbon treaty is not about. No conscription, no mandatory euthanasia, gay marriages or abortion, no tax harmonisation, no dilution of Irish identity, no abandonment of the Irish veto on World Trade talks, no to all the other porkies which the No side so effectively peddled and which the Yes side were so abysmal at countering -- and very slow out of the traps into the bargain.

It cannot, incidentally, have been helpful that some of the key protagonists on the Yes side -- like the Taoiseach and the Irish EU Commissioner -- confessed not to have read the document fully. It takes some chutzpah to expect the voters to vote for a document you can't be bothered to read yourself. Charlie McCreevy's comment that he hadn't read it completely and "would not expect any sane person to do so" may have been endearingly honest and typically forthright. But was it politically wise?

I don't think so. A view supported by the Eurobarometer poll on why people voted No. The predominant reason by far was unfamiliarity with the treaty. "How can I vote for something I'm not familiar with?"

So the conclusion some are tempted to come to -- that the Irish are an ungrateful lot who, having pocketed around €50bn in EU grants in recent years, are now unhappy at becoming net contributors and have fallen out of love with Europe -- is a complete misreading. The Irish may be nostalgic for the EU as it was, "the way we were", but they have always shown generosity to those in need.

The No vote was largely down to a failure to have the Lisbon treaty properly explained and the myths debunked. The Nos have always enjoyed a core vote of around 20 per cent of the electorate who generally turn out, so, unless there is a pretty high participation rate, they are likely to garner a high percentage of the vote.

How realistic is it to expect Irish politicians to put the Lisbon treaty back to the people with a few knobs on it to make clear that Irish neutrality is inviolate etc? Certainly they will come under enormous pressure from France, Germany and the Commission, but if they choose to resist they may find allies just across the Irish Sea.

The British, like the Irish, are resolutely opposed to the whole idea of a two-speed Europe -- though they are often erroneously attracted to an equally pernicious idea: that of a directory of the three bigs, UK, France and Germany, to act as the new motor of Europe. Not only does this alienate the smalls, but it also puts Italian, Spanish and Polish noses out of joint. Both ideas need to be firmly squashed if something of the original concept and, yes, idealism of a European Union is to be salvaged. But the British will stand with the Irish in opposing a two-speed Europe -- and if, as seems likely, the Conservatives win the next election, they would probably be staunch allies in defending the Irish from being bullied into a new referendum.

Whether the Irish will enjoy being driven into the UK's embrace, when one of the attractions of the European venture was precisely to escape from Ireland's historic over-reliance and dependence economically on the British market, is of course a very different matter. Europe offered Ireland the opportunity of marrying political independence from Britain with a far wider dimension for her economy and trade.

To face becoming semi-detached from Europe with only the British for company is every Irish government's bad dream. They will be hoping that it remains just the stuff of nightmares.

Sir Ivor Roberts is the President of Trinity College, Oxford and former British Ambassador to Ireland, Italy and Yugoslavia

Brussels EU

This just came from Bobby Garner.. kind of incredible. Can't wait to study it!

“Brussels EU” construct further eroded

The recent ruling by the German Constitutional Court, on Germany’s ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, does not merely threaten Berlin's schedule for the ratification of the treaty: it also further erodes the very credibility of the “Brussels EU” itself. As eloquently described in the comprehensive analysis published in the German Der Spiegel newspaper, published on 6th July, the court’s ruling and its possible ramifications are a political bombshell that could tip the scales for the other European countries that have yet to ratify the treaty – namely Ireland, Poland and the Czech Republic.

In contrast to the premature and disingenuous pronouncements of those commentators and politicians who claimed that the ruling was favourable to Germany’s ratification of the treaty, examination of it reveals that the legal challenge filed with the court was largely successful – especially so given that the complainants and applicants are to be reimbursed their necessary expenses in proportion to their success in the proceedings.

In essence, the court has ruled that by passing the so-called "accompanying law" to the Lisbon Treaty, which determines the rights of the German parliament to participate in European legislation, Germany had relinquished significant monitoring rights to the “Brussels EU”. According to the judges, this unconstitutionally subjects the German people to the whims of a bureaucracy that lacks sufficient democratic legitimacy.

Moreover, the concluding statements of the court's decision make clear that the EU is not a state but rather an "association of sovereign states". As such, it follows that there can be no sovereign citizens' union and no completely representative organ in the form of the European Parliament – the latter of which the judges clearly state to be terminally undemocratic.

Significantly, therefore, the court has submitted a request to the German parliament to pass a new trial law. This could allow every German citizen to file a special EU suit with the Constitutional Court against unpopular European regulations and standards. As a result, no matter what German representatives agree to in Brussels, they will now always run the risk of a complaint being filed against them. The effect that this would have upon the Brussels EU dictatorship is nothing short of profound.

Little by little, therefore, it is becoming increasingly clear that we are witnessing the beginning of the end for the “Brussels EU” experiment. Whilst Chancellor Merkel and her friends may still be trying to pretend to the outside world that the treaty has cleared an important hurdle, the reality is that their deeply undemocratic plans for the future of Europe are now falling around them in tatters.

To read an analysis of the ruling published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) newspaper, click here.

For further analysis, from an Irish perspective, describing how the German judgment fundamentally changes the “Brussels EU” experiment, read Bruce Arnold’s insightful article in the Irish Independent by clicking here.

To read the German Constitutional Court’s ruling, click here.

To read the German Constitutional Court’s press release that accompanied the ruling, click here.