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Recent Articles about National EU13 things the Lisbon Treaty would do Jul 09 09 The Legal guarantees on Lisbon Treaty will not change treaty - a propa... Jul 08 09 Dáil shouldn't have inferior Lisbon Treaty powers to German Parliament... Jul 02 09 The Lisbon Treaty and the triumph of technocracy national |
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 Saturday July 11, 2009 19:18 by Steve McGiffen - www.spectrezine.org spmcgiffen at yahoo dot co dot uk
 An exclusive article for Indymedia.ie
Steve McGiffen, Assistant Professor of International Relations
Steve McGiffen is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the American Graduate School of International Relations and Diplomacy in Paris. He is editor of the radical left website Spectre [www.spectrezine.org] and, with Kartika Liotard, MEP, the author of Poisoned Spring: The EU and Water Privatisation (Pluto Press, 2009). Steve can be contacted at spmcgiffen [@] yahoo.co.uk This does not, as yet, represent the complete abolition of democracy, whose continued existence, albeit in shadow form, retains a powerful propaganda function. We are still able to decide for ourselves, as peoples, whether we want legalised abortion, a smoking ban, gay marriage, identity cards and even, as things stand, a socialised system of health care. Yet these issues, though important in themselves, are either subordinate to the economic questions now effectively removed from politics, or not truly controversial within the realm of capital itself. Whether a country has legal abortion or not has few implications for capitalism, which has shown itself capable of adapting to progress towards gender equality. Similarly with the issue of gay marriage. Right-wing views on such matters are mere atavisms, of no fundamental importance to the maintenance of this hyperexploitative system. What really counts is the economy, and the creation and maintenance of conduits for the transfer of public wealth into private hands. Of the issues I mention above, the one which bears most heavily upon this is the question of socialised medicine, which is why the European Commission has, with measures such as the directive on the application of patients' rights in to cross-border healthcare, begun what will become a steady, erosive assault on this cornerstone of a civilised, humane and efficient society. No issue is immune from removal from the democratised realm in which elected national governments answerable to elected national parliaments continue to exercise real decision-making powers. The Lisbon Treaty's extension of qualified majority voting into several new policy areas, and the concomitant abolition of the national veto in those areas, represent an attempt to narrow the policy choices available to elected politicians still further. Capitalism faces what may be its greatest ever crisis, one which has been evident to it since the oil shocks of the 1970s. In order to extricate itself from this crisis it needs to increase the rate at which it extracts surplus value from labour. There is no other way, and everything must be subordinated to this. All policy areas must be scrutinised through the lens of corporate capital's economic imperatives. The war on terrorism, another part of the process of undermining the powers of democratically elected institutions, is about creating the structures needed to discipline what is certain to become an increasingly rebellious, troublesome population and workforce. The continued pressure to force member states to accept genetically modified organisms is designed to enhance the control of the food supply by major corporations, as hunger is an even more effective disciplinary tool than a police officer's baton or gun. Whatever else the bank crisis may be, it also represents an opportunity to move wealth from the public purse to private pockets. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan likewise. Because any and every aspect of our lives can be turned into an opportunity to profit, any and every aspect of our lives must eventually be removed from the realm of popular democratic decision-making, or even influence. Governments must cut social spending because Brussels tells them they must, just as Tony Blair took his country into an illegal war because God told him to do it. Popular sovereignty was a fad whose time has passed. The creation of an independent European Central Bank was thus the thin end of the wedge. Politicians, we are told by those who favour this dictatorship of the bankers, are not for the most part economists; they are vulnerable to their short-term need to win elections; they cannot be trusted to put the public interest before career or party. If all of this disqualifies them from making economic decisions, however, they are surely also unfit to decide on other questions. Abortion, gay marriage? Well, they aren't necessarily lawyers, doctors or philosophers, either, so why let them near such issues? GMOs? What does the average politician know of DNA markers or protein structure, or the relationship between genotype and phenotype? Clearly, if politicians, and by implication the people who elect them, can't be trusted to take decisions about economics, they can scarcely be trusted to take decisions on anything at all. And so, in place of democracy, we now have a developing technocracy, in which decisions of importance are increasingly removed from the elected and given to the appointed. The European Union's bogus internationalism makes for effective propaganda. I concentrate my own oppositional activity on the EU simply because it is the most powerful distillation of bourgeois hegemony in my part of the world. Its function and philosophy are indistinguishable from other transnational instruments of technocratic rule such as the WTO and IMF. I am equally opposed to these international bodies, yet in presenting my arguments against them I have never once provoked the charge that I am nationalistic, or anti-internationalist. No-one, even their most ardent admirers, has ever to my knowledge tried to romanticise these institutions, to claim that they are responsible for decades of peace, or that they represent a future in which we will all embrace across boundaries of culture and language. Yet such things are said of the European Union all of the time. A second 'no' vote would, of course, achieve nothing concrete. Ireland would be reviled, the Irish people insulted, the democratic veil worn by the European establishment once more cast aside, and a way found to continue business as usual. It would, however, represent a tremendous blow on the level of propaganda, and thus an important step in the war of manoeuvre we are obliged to fight, now that power is so diffuse, now that there are no more Winter Palaces to storm. Two centuries of progress towards politically and socially democratic societies are being reversed. At the very least, a no vote would mean that this is not happening with our acquiescence. At best, it might represent the beginnings of an effective progressive movement against this ongoing subversion of everything which underlies the relatively egalitarian prosperity and relatively open societies which have increasingly characterised western Europe since the defeat, in the ruins of Berlin in 1945, of the last attempt to destroy democracy and impose a bogus Union on its peoples. Steve McGiffen is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the American Graduate School of International Relations and Diplomacy in Paris. He is editor of the radical left website Spectre [www.spectrezine.org] and, with Kartika Liotard, MEP, the author of Poisoned Spring: The EU and Water Privatisation (Pluto Press, 2009). Steve can be contacted at spmcgiffen [@] yahoo.co.uk
A list of some of the groups campaigning against the Lisbon Treaty can be found HERE.
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Comments (17 of 17)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17Here's a copy of a letter from Jim Higgins, MEP (Fine Gael) stating that Anti-Lisbon treaty campaigners are a "motley crew" with "spurious" arguments, citing specifically Declan Ganley and Sinn Féin.
Anti-Lisbon Campaigners: "motley crew" with "spurious arguments"
Jim Higgins should be asked his opinion on the Corrib Gas scandal and on private mercenary armies operating in his own back yard?
Also has he published his expenses yet?
Fine Gail had a golden opportunity to nail Fianna Fail corruption over the corrib issue but chose not to , WHY?
This man and his coleagues have a lot to hide. Just like Fianna Fail.
Jim Higgins M.E.P. is just one of the many "Pied Pipers" referred to at http://www.indymedia.ie/article/86545#comment223456
He (and his kind) will benefit from a "yes" vote, and that's ALL that he (and they) care about.
Don't be fooled by them.
And don't forget that he (and his kind) only have one vote each, while the rest of the voters have hundreds of thousands more votes than they do, which hopefully the vast majority of them wil use to say "no": again!!
The yes campaign are now advertising on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/results?uploaded=w&search_query=...ideos
http://www.voteyes.ie/?gclid=CPSz6bXz0JsCFVUA4wodOVegKQ
As a person who who has looked at it fairly closely, it seems obvious (to me) that the structure of the European Union favours tyranny over democracy, and that the Lisbon Treaty is designed to slyly strengthen the basically tyrannous nature of the overall organisation.
The age old "Separation of Powers Doctrine" that can be traced back to ancient Greece, and which has long been society's main protector of genuine democracy, appears to me to be virtually absent (in practice) in the European Union structure.
Though the "shadow" of democracy is present in European Union activities, as has been stated above (in the main part of this article), it seems to me that it is only there because it is necessary for "propaganda" purposes, and for fooling gullible voters into voting for a "wolf in sheep's clothing".
The last contribution is so self evidently silly that one hardly knows where to begin. Obviously the writer has never tried to live in a real tyranny – if he/she had they would know that the EU States are the very opposite of tyranny – indeed the community was born out of the desire to get as far away as possible from tyranny. Part of the secret of the economic success of the community is the realisation that pooling a little sovereignty and agreeing binding common rules is a good thing. The nationalistic and tyrannical insistence on total territorial sovereignty is an outdated idea that far seeing minds as far back as the 1920’s realised were enslaving and pauperising people not serving them.
The separation of powers doctrine evolved in England not in ancient Greece and is alive and kicking in the EU if you bother to read up on it or observe it. It has an executive, a legislature and a judiciary which have defined powers as to the member states vis a vis the member states.
Going on about shadow democracy and the like is just common or garden conspiracy stuff that not even argued for – just states. Debate on the Lisbon Treaty yes but let it be fact based.
Begin at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers -- which clearly states:
"The separation of powers, also known as trias politica, is a model for the governance of democratic states. The model was first developed in ancient Greece and came into widespread use by the Roman Republic as part of the uncodified Constitution of the Roman Republic."
I don't agree with the analysis or that it invalidates my point. I do agree that the antecedents of the system were apparent principally in the Roman Republic mainly with hindsight. It was not fully apparent or described by Montesquieu until post 1688 England. In any case the system is fully visible and is a daily reality in the EU and the Lisbon Treaty reinforces it rather than undermines it. I note you avoid addressing the main points I made. The equation of the EU with tyranny is baseless. It was to avoid tyranny, war and the mutual suspicion caused by an excessive focus on nationalism to the detriment of the partnership of neighbours that the community was begun and its economic and political achievements were the reasons for its continued successes and evolution.
"The equation of the EU with tyranny is baseless." -- an earlier statement made by you.
When making such statements, I wonder if you have given any consideration at all to the views of people like Vladimir Bukovsky? -- more on him at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Bukovsky.
The following two excerpts are from a speech Mr Bukovsky made during a visit to Brussels in February, 2006:
"It is no accident that the European Parliament, for example, reminds me of the Supreme Soviet. It looks like the Supreme Soviet because it was designed like it. Similarly, when you look at the European Commission it looks like the Politburo. I mean it does so exactly, except for the fact that the Commission now has 25 members and the Politburo usually had 13 or 15 members. Apart from that they are exactly the same, unaccountable to anyone, not directly elected by anyone at all. When you look into all this bizarre activity of the European Union with its 80,000 pages of regulations it looks like Gosplan. We used to have an organisation which was planning everything in the economy, to the last nut and bolt, five years in advance. Exactly the same thing is happening in the EU. When you look at the type of EU corruption, it is exactly the Soviet type of corruption, going from top to bottom rather than going from bottom to top."
"If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union. Of course, it is a milder version of the Soviet Union. Please, do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that it has a Gulag. It has no KGB – not yet – but I am very carefully watching such structures as Europol for example. That really worries me a lot because this organisation will probably have powers bigger than those of the KGB. They will have diplomatic immunity."
More on the "Warnings from Vladimir Bukovsky" subject (regarding EU Dictatorship) can be found via the following link:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Warnings+from+Vlad...&aqi=
I as a senior citizen have grown extremely tired of hearing despots claiming to be democrats and friends of the people, It is very hard to seperate lies from truth. ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS.
The refusal to honour Irelands democratic vote is an action that should warn people of the insidious forces behind this treaty.
The refusal to condemn Israel for the murderous genocide in Gaza is another.
Why would the former colonising countries Germany, Britain, France, Italy, and Spain want to go to war when they can get what they want by stealth.
Fianna Fails use of the French multinational company VIOLIA to controll water and sewerage schemes and the LUAS trams in Ireland is an example of what the EU has in store for us. This company is contracted to the Iraeli's to run a tram system in the occupied palastinian teritory in Gaza.
When we entered the EU we sacrificed one of our major resources ( our fishing rights)and we were promised all sorts of goodies in return, very few of which materialised.
Our farmers are totally under controll of the EU through dependance on Eu subsidies and grants that can be withdrawn at any time.
Now we are told that if we don't vote yes this time our position as members of the EU will be compromised. IN other words the EU is not going to accept a democratic decision by Ireland without administering punishment for our audacity for not doing what they want.
People can post on this site and claim to be lefties or whatever but that does not mean that they are, we can only judge by their points of view.
IF YOU DO NOT FULLY UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE VOTING FOR THEN VOTE NO OR ABSTAIN.
I would like to take up the debate with "Pro-Lisbon Lefty".
The key point is that last year after a long debate a referendum was held on the Lisbon Treaty and the people voted no. The political and media forces that dominate our society did not accept the will of the Irish people and are forcing them to vote on exactly the same treaty in contravention of Article six of the Irish Constitution. They are doing so after abolishing the National Forum on Europe which held public debates on the treaty throughout the country for the simple reason that they lost those debates while at the same time they are ignoring the Irish Supreme Court McKenna Judgement and seking to undermine the Irish Supreme Court Coughlan Judgement.
The issue therefore is it a left wing value to reject the democrat decision of the Irish people? In fact there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that if the decision was made on a 32 county basis like the vote on the Good Friday Agreement the no vote would have been even higher. The treaty is 96% the same as the EU Constitution which was rejected by the French and Dutch people and if the rest of the people in the other EU states had a right to vote, they too would vote no. Of course there are pleny of people on the "left" who think they are much more intelligent than ordinary people and in fact as a Labour Party member I talk to them all the time. What defines them is their sense of their own superiority not to mention that they have been like David Begg put on the Board of the Central Bank etc so they make money out being superior. They ignore and despise ordinary people and then when the same people they despise turn to the BNP and other right win parties they get all upset and morally superior. The absolute reality is that no person on the "left" should reject the democratic will of the people. By rejecting the will of the people they are not Left wing. There are only a few weeks to go before the vote on the 2nd of October. The battle lines are between those who believe in democracy and those who do not. With all their power and money and with fear massive and widespread as a consequence of the yes sides commitment to supporting imperialist wars and horrific neo-liberal economic policies, I for one will not be surprised or shocked of they win. But they always underestimate the will and power and deeply rooted commitment to Irish Democracy, Irish Independence and Irish Neutrality after 800 plus years that resides with the people. A second victory is therfore in my opinion a real option If the Irish people do vote no then they will become to most popular people in Europe and will be cheered to the rafters.
"If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union."
You can say that about ANY bureaucracy...it is playing games with words.
ALL bureaucracies look the same at a superficial level.
People FLED FROM the Soviet Union and its slave colonies.
Often shot in the back for doing so.
People FLEE TO the European Union.
That is the difference between a tyranny and the the EU.
The EU is most successful international organisation ever conceived.
Its inhabitants tend to be wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of anybody who lived in Europe just a few generations ago.
How QUICKLY the Irish forget the BILLIONS of European money we received which dragged us out of poverty... within living memory.
.
My view of Bukovsky is that he is quite wrong. He was hardly in the west a few weeks in the 1970s when he began his fault finding and I believe him to have been well got by rightist eurosceptic elements in Britain whom he has mixed with. I believe he is either an intellectual malcontent of some sort or that he was somewhat unhinged by the horrors he experienced in the USSR. I don’t believe his formation allows for great validity to be attached to his judgement in these matters. In any case he is a long standing resident of the UK and is coming at this from a UK centric perspective which is the not the right one for Ireland. On the EU issue the interests of the UK and Ireland are divergent.
As regards Roger Cole’s points there is nothing whatever elitist abut being left wing. My position is a left wing one and I see the development of the EU as enhancing democracy and socialism rather than threatening it. I believe the prosperity of the Irish economy which will provide the funds we want to spend on social services and the like is best guaranteed by full participation in the EU project. A second No vote may not formally put Ireland out of the EU at least initially but it would have zilch influence compared to what it used to have. It is very hard to get this idea across to someone who has no experience of diplomacy or international negotiations in any field but it is valid nonetheless. In this country there is no one right or left among the ministers who have ever represented Ireland at the Council who is now a eurosceptic nor is there among the ranks or former diplomats or officials or even in the ranks of the IFA despite the latter’s play acting last time around.
It is precisely because the consequences are so profound of a second No for Ireland that the vote is being re-run. The last vote was respected but the political class including the Labour Party know how important this is for us. Let it be put a second time to make sure Ireland really still says No. It’s not good to have a re-run but it’s because it’s so important it has to be done. The stakes could not be higher. Ireland would be throwing its economic future away if it did this and would be going back to the insularity and economic and social feebleness of past decades if we go down this road.
In response to "lefty2.
The democratic vote of the Irish people in the Republic of Ireland was not respected. If it had been respected they would not be forced to vote again on exactly the same treaty. My core point remains. A person who does not respect the democratic will of the people after it has been expressed in a democratic referendum is by definition not "left wing".
I would argue that any person (or any group of people) who refuses to respect (and accept) the democratic will of the people of the Republic of Ireland, as expressed last year in connection with the Lisbon Treaty Referendum held in the Republic of Ireland, is not a democrat.
I would further argue that any person (or any group of people) who refuses to accept last year's democratic decision, by demanding re-runs of the Lisbon Treaty referendum election until they get the particular type of result they want, is a tyrant at heart: and that there is no amount of verbal gymnastics which will alter that basic fact.
In fact, and as far as I'm concerned at least, the verbal gymnastics make things much, much worse, because their sole purpose (as I see things) is deception.
"The separation of powers, also known as trias politica, is a model for the governance of democratic states. The model was first developed in ancient Greece and came into widespread use by the Roman Republic as part of the uncodified Constitution of the Roman Republic."
Huh.
Rome was a highly militaristic imperialist dictatorship.
"Pax Romana" meant keeping the colonies down by brutal military force.
The great Celtic leader Boudica comes to mind:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica
Uniquely in European history,since even before the Romans, this is NOW true:
No two Western European armies have clashed with each other in living memory.
That is saying something.
Thanks to the EU.
That ALONE means it gets my support.
.
To Pete @ Wed Jul 15, 2009 08:13
The "Separation of Powers" safeguard against tyranny only works if it is put into practice, and then only for the duration of the period that it remains in use.
If, among the governments of the world who have it built into their constitutions in a major way (which includes the Republic of Ireland), the "Separation of Powers" principle gets cast to one side for any reason, such as rampant corruption in the case of the overall Government of ancient Rome for example, then it is simply not there to provide any protection (by definition), and descent and decline into tyranny and lawlessness -- often fraudulently and cunningly disguised verbally as "democracy and the rule of law" by the tyrants involved -- is the usual result.
In the case of the European Union structure, and as I have stated earlier, the "Separation of Powers" mechanism appears to me to be virtually absent (in practice) from the basic structure (by design); and, if it is not part of the basic structure in the first place (to any significant extent), then how can it ever sensibly be expected to prevent tyranny in the European Union?
"No two Western European armies have clashed with each other in living memory."
That's true since World War 2 perhaps (which is well within living memory incidentally).
However, that does not mean that some or all of those "standing armies" who are largely idle at the present time are not itching for a really good fight, or, that they won't join forces (with the help of the Lisbon Treaty) to get involved in some huge combined military conflict "down the road": such as, for example, an all-out Christian versus Muslim military confrontation for instance; which, with due regard for the fact that Pakistan (a Muslim state) is known to have nuclear weapons, could conceivably leave billions dead -- were such a war ever to get started (as some people perhaps might love to see happen). This will be my main reason for voting "NO" to Round 2 of the Lisbon Treaty Referendum, and to Round 3, Round 4, ..., Round 24, ..., -- or whatever number of reiterations we have to endure.