Brave New World
On September 13,
at 10:17 PM ET, C-Span broadcast the
State of the European Union address given
by Jose Manuel Barroso. The speech was actually delivered on September 11.
It's pretty safe
to say that most Americans have never heard of Barroso because our mainstream
media considers it more important to cover the latest traffic accident than to
mention what other world leaders say - except when it serves a political purpose
as in the case of Vladimir Putin recently. But if you were to investigate
Jose Manuel Barroso - who he is, where he came from and what he does in the
European Union, you would understand much better what is going on in our
country.
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Barroso was born in 1956. He was Prime
Minister of Portugal from April 6, 2002 to July 17, 2004. He is
the 11th and current President of the European Commission since November
23, 2004.
He graduated with a degree in law from the
University of Lisbon. He did research for a Ph.D at Georgetown
University and Georgetown's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in
Washington, D.C. but his CV does not list any doctoral degree (except
honorary). He is a
1998 graduate of the Georgetown Leadership Seminar.
Barroso's political activity began in his college
days, before the |
Jose Manuel Barroso |
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Carnation
Revolution of 25 April 1974. He was one of the leaders of the
underground Maoist MRPP (Reorganising Movement of the Proletariat Party,
later PCTP/MRPP, Communist Party of the Portuguese Workers/Revolutionary
Movement of the Portuguese Proletariat). In an interview with the
newspaper Expresso, he said that he had joined MRPP to fight the only
other student body movement, also underground, which was controlled by
the Communist Party.
Sources for the information:
Browse Biography
European Commission - CV
(Note: Social Democrats are Communists)
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Since Barroso is five years younger than I am,
and I know what I was doing and knowing in 1974, I have to believe that
Barroso was born into a communist revolutionary family and was groomed
for leadership - a rising star from the underclass - like Bill Clinton and
Barack Obama.
European Commission
Now that you know who Jose Manuel Barroso
is, you need to know what the
European Commission is and what they do.
What they do is write the international laws for the European Union. In
the terms I've been using, they are the legal foot soldiers for the
Empire of
the Black Robe.
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Purpose
The Commission
represents and upholds the interests of
the EU as a whole. It oversees and
implements EU policies by:
- proposing
new laws to Parliament and the
Council
- managing
the EU's budget and allocating
funding
- enforcing
EU law (together with the Court of
Justice)
-
representing the EU internationally,
for example, by negotiating
agreements between the EU and other
countries.
1.
Proposing new laws
The Commission
has the 'right of initiative' – it can
propose new laws to protect the
interests of the EU and its citizens. It
does this only on issues that cannot be
dealt with effectively at national,
regional or local level (subsidiarity
principle).
When the
Commission proposes a law, it tries to
satisfy the widest possible range of
interests. To get the technical details
right, it consults experts through
various committees and groups. It also
holds public consultations.
The Commission’s
departments produce a draft of the
proposed new law. If at least 14 of the
28 Commissioners agree with it, the
draft is then sent to the Council and
Parliament. After debating and amending
the draft, they decide whether to adopt
it as a law.
2.
Managing
the EU’s
budget
and
allocating
funding
With the
Council
and
Parliament,
the
Commission
sets
broad
long-term
spending
priorities
for the
EU in
the EU
'financial
framework'.
It also
draws up
an
annual
budget
for
approval
by
Parliament
and the
Council,
and
supervises
how EU
funds
are
spent –
by
agencies
and
national
and
regional
authorities,
for
instance.
The
Commission’s
management
of the
budget
is
scrutinised
by the
Court of
Auditors.
The
Commission
manages
funding
for EU
policies
(e.g.
agriculture
and
rural
development)
and
programmes
such as
'Erasmus'
(student
exchanges).
3.
Enforcing
European
law
As
'guardian
of the
Treaties',
the
Commission
checks
that
each
member
country
is
applying
EU law
properly.
If it
thinks a
national
government
is
failing
to apply
EU law,
the
Commission
first
sends an
official
letter
asking
it to
correct
the
problem.
As a
last
resort ,
the
Commission
refers
the
issue to
the
Court of
Justice.
The
Court
can
impose
penalties,
and its
decisions
are
binding
on EU
countries
and
institutions.
4.
Representing
the EU
internationally
The
Commission
speaks
on
behalf
of all
EU
countries
in
international
bodies
like the
World
Trade
Organisation.
It also
negotiates
international
agreements
for the
EU such
as the
Cotonou
Agreement
(on aid
and
trade
between
the EU
and
developing
countries
in
Africa,
the
Caribbean
and the
Pacific).
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On the
history page of the
European Commission, they date their history from the European Coal and
Steel treaty but that was only the beginning of the formal organization that was
formed to incrementally crush the national sovereignty of the nation-states of
Europe to build the European "common market". The true beginning was
even before that but American history joins the conspiracy at the point of the
Marshall Plan - the true purpose of
which was concealed from the American people. With the benefit of
hindsight, the global idea was to create continental market states - commercial
zones under a world system of law - the Empire of the Black Robe.
So how did I
happen to catch all of this? An interesting thing happened. Often, I
have C-Span on to listen to while I'm doing other things. Last night, I
was playing cards online. I distinctly heard Jose Barroso say the words,
"our world state" and even though my attention was elsewhere, those words came
through loud and clear. I thought that's an interesting thing to say so I
searched on the term, 'world state'. Wiki came up first on the list of
course, but it was all I needed.
Brave New World
The World State is the
primary setting of Aldous Huxley's 1932 dystopian novel
Brave New World. In the novel, the World State is a
unified government which administers the entire planet, with
a few isolated exceptions.
The motto of the World State is
Community, Identity, Stability.
The description
of Huxley's Brave New World fits the description of the world I've been
describing these many years. I went searching for a
transcript
of Barroso's speech because it is important to accurately document things
like this. I found the transcript on the EU Commission website. It
turns out he didn't say world state. He said world stage. But it
doesn't matter because in this context, they are one and the same. Here is
what he actually said:
"Whether
defending our interests in international trade, securing our energy
provision, or restoring people's sense of fairness by fighting tax fraud and
tax evasion: only by acting as a Union do we pull our weight at the world
stage."
What I heard him
say - and what he said, is a minor deal at this point. What is important
is something else he said:
"But
every one of us can explain what we did and why:
there is a direct link between one country's loans and another country's
banks, between one country's investments and another country's businesses,
between one country's workers and another country's
companies. This kind of interdependence means only European solutions work."
What he described
there, is what I called 'Criss-Cross,
Double Cross' and for icing on the cake, on the
European
Commission website, there is an article about his speech that begins this
way. I added the highlight:
In his 2013 State
of the Union address, President Barroso
made a rallying call to 'all those that
care about Europe, whatever their
political or ideological position,
wherever they come from, to speak up for
Europe'.
Exactly five years after the fall of Lehman
Brothers, the President's speech
recalled what has been achieved since then.
'If we look back and think about what we
have done together to unite Europe
throughout the crisis, we would never have
thought all of this possible 5 years ago,'
he concluded, 'What matters now is what we
make of this progress. Do we talk it up, or
talk it down? Do we draw confidence from it
to pursue what we've started, or do we
belittle the results of our efforts?'
Lehman's filed
for bankruptcy in 2008 - just before the alleged banking crisis that resulted in
the banker bailout but I wasn't really prepared for this bit of information:
"Although
Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on Monday, September 15, 2008, it was
actually “bombed” on September 11, when the biggest one-day drop in its
stock and highest trading volume occurred before bankruptcy. Lehman CEO
Richard Fuld maintained that the 158 year old bank was brought down by
unsubstantiated rumors and illegal naked short selling. Although short
selling (selling shares you don’t own) is legal, the short seller is
required to have shares lined up to borrow and replace to cover the sale.
Failure to buy the shares back in the next three trading days is called a
“fail to deliver.” Christopher Cox, who was chairman of the Securities and
Exchange Commission in 2008, said in a July 2009 article that naked short
selling “can allow manipulators to force prices down far lower than would be
possible in legitimate short-selling conditions.” By September 11, 2008,
according to the SEC, as many as 32.8 million Lehman shares had been
sold and not delivered – a 57-fold increase over the peak of the
prior year. For a very large company like Lehman, with plenty of “float”
(available shares for trading), this unprecedented number was highly
suspicious and warranted serious investigation. But the SEC, which was
criticized for failing to follow up even on tips that Bernie Madoff’s
business was a ponzi scheme, has yet to announce the results of any
investigation." Ellen Brown, Web of Debt
A State of Union
speech wouldn't be complete without including plans for the coming year (link
and highlight added). Barroso did not disappoint:
So let
us continue to work together to reform our economies, for growth and jobs,
and to adapt our institutional architecture. Only if we do so, we will leave
this phase of the crisis behind us as well.
There is a lot we can still deliver together, in this Parliament's and this
Commission's mandate.
What we can and must do, first and foremost, let's be concrete is delivering
the banking union. It is the
first and most urgent phase on the way to deepen our economic and monetary
union, as mapped out in the
Commission's Blueprint presented last autumn.
The legislative process on the
Single Supervisory Mechanism is almost completed. The next step is
the ECBs independent valuation of banks assets, before it takes up its
supervisory role.
I suppose we could consider it just a coincidence that the
American Action Forum sponsored a
panel discussion on
C-Span featuring Barney Franks, Bill Thompson, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Steve
Liesman (gotta love the name for the CNBC anchor) talking about the 2008
Financial Crisis.
Since I'd never
heard of the American
Action Forum, I did a search on them. They bill themselves as an
"action-tank" - an independent non-profit but they must be connected with
Harvard's Institute
of Politics. I think it's pretty safe to say that in the coming
year, there will be proposals for an international solution - billed as an
American solution but however they present it, it will be the banking and
monetary system for the Brave New World - the Empire of the Black Robes.
Vicky Davis
September 14, 2013