[declan ganley] not protocol, old chum

I'd like to meet his tailor.

Oh I like this one very much. Rubbing my hands together as I type [which is a bit tricky] but most likely you know all about this anyway from months ago.

How many of you good people out there have heard of Declan Ganley?

Give up?

Maybe all of you today because he's been in the news. He's "founder and Chairman of Libertas, a campaigning and lobby group which advocated a No vote to the 2008 referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon in Ireland." He lent millions apparently and facilitated airtime and so on - many say he was instrumental in getting the No vote so high.

So far so good. Today:

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who is on a state visit to Ireland, angered ministers by staging a news conference with [Declan Ganley]. Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin called the action inappropriate, only to be dubbed a hypocrite by Mr Klaus.

Now that is most undiplomatic language and breaches protocol which I know just a little about, having been involved with a trade minister in some international meetings. That sort of thing is so beyond the pale [unfortunate choice of word by me today] that I'm immediately asking where he gets the confidence to say that from.

Possible answer:

Ganley personally has strong financial links with the American military and homeland security. A number of the contracts which he has with the Pentagon - which he has now admitted amount to at least $ 200 million-appear to be on a closed, non-competitive basis, potentially enabling him to earn significant profits.

Right - so that is interesting but what is even more interesting, to me at leeast, is the tone of the Wiki article, which spells out in detail the case against him but his own explanations are "Ganley claimed", makig him look very dodgy indeed. I don't believe it for a second. He may be dodgy, don't get me wrong but this is a beat up.

Something occurred in that meeting to give Mr. Klaus confidence. Now what could that be? Let's look at the Czech Republic just now. They are a member of the Vizegrad Group of four countries which requires funding. The Americans are also interested:

The agreement between the Senate and the House of Representatives would also fully fund the request for a radar site in the Czech Republic, opening the door for the next U.S. presidential administration to begin building a European missile defense system.

Could this be where the "stick' came from between the President and Irish ministers? It's also interesting that only the Irish stand between freedom and the EU monster - they must have a sense of history, of destiny in the world. Or else, as my friend has just said, they received all their goodies from the EU early from the EU, said thank you and as no more was coming, decided to vote No anyway. Irish perversity?

Either way, Declan Ganley, for whatever reasons, appears to be standing between a monolithic organization and freedom. That appeals to this blogger very much. Also the fact that:

The Czech Republic takes over the rotating EU presidency on 1 January 2009.

[lisbon] the last candle flickers in october

This will need to be confronted by the ordinary man and woman before October.

The press first, in the words of EU Referendum:

[In this recession], increasingly, the news is not generated by newspapers but by the various agencies. Much of the copy is now simply a "cut and paste" job, with a few tweaks, the less honest of the papers then simply adding their journos' names to the final result. Where this gets important is that a very few news agencies (and then a very few journalists within those agencies) are essentially controlling the print (and indeed much of the rest of the electronic) media.

Through this means, one sees insidious distortions and simplifications which completely change the context of the political debate. And, like water flowing through the cracks in the dam, they percolate everywhere, finding their way into thousands of print and online journals, influencing the way people think about the world.

So, while the major players on the No side put their view on the 2nd Lisbon vote, AP reported it as 'Ireland Votes Again' - distortion of the debate and 'the poisonous drip of misinformation'.

On the chances of a No vote second time around:

However, it seems to us obvious that Mr Ganley made a monumental mistake when he allowed his vanity to lead him into trying to form a pan-European party.

Flushed with the triumph of the No vote in the first Irish referendum he ought to have sat back and said that he was interested only in stopping the treaty. This could not be done in the Toy Parliament (a point that escaped Mr Ganley, I suspect) and, therefore, Libertas was not going to get involved in those elections but wait for the second referendum and campaign there.

At most, he should have campaigned only in Ireland, making that into a back-up referendum. He and his colleagues might have done quite well.

Instead, Mr Ganley decided to promote himself and his followers into a band of brothers dedicated to the salvation and reform of the European project. They failed miserably and deservedly. In the process, though, they destroyed Libertas's political credibility in Ireland and damaged, very severely, the chances of a No vote in October when the second referendum is likely to take place. (Smart money is on October 10 but no decision can be taken until the Referendum Bill is passed by the Dail in July.)

The battle in Ireland will be a tough one, made much tougher by Declan Ganley's recent antics and failure. We, in this country, must do all we can to help. This blog is standing by.

Courtesy of EU Referendum, here is the list of British traitors who defied public opinion and voted Yes to Lisbon, knowing full well, in the words of Heritagedotorg:

The new Treaty poses the biggest threat to national sovereignty in Europe since the Second World War, would threaten the future of the Anglo-American Special Relationship, and would significantly weaken the transatlantic alliance.

So what's new in this post?

Only a perspective.

Most anti-Union pundits concentrate on the threat to our sovereignty and to the corruption of the EU. Not many write of who would head it. Yes, I know Tony Blair has been mooted and Barroso but I mean who will really control Europe.

The powers that allowed and funded Hitler's rise are still there. The majority of the Thirteen Families are still there. The Round Table Groups are still there. It's not the very monolithic nature of the Union and the hoovering up of all semblance of sovereignty within the UK which frightens me the most - it's the presence of real evil in the heart of Europe, the posterity of the generators of strife over the centuries. They're the ones whose puppets will govern and the work they had Hitler doing, which went pear-shaped due to his imperfections, can begin again.

Do you honestly believe that the people who put Hitler in power were all killed in the bunker with him? Or did they just slip back into the shadows to wait for the next opportunity?

It's not just an economic zone we're on about here, it's not just the shape of your power sockets - it's the whole sordid agenda of 1929 to 1945 all over again. Make no mistake, if Lisbon goes through in Ireland, the implementation pan-Europe will be swift and complete. Then the real agenda will begin pulling what was the UK into the vortex with it.

It's not at all fanciful to suggest - just look at the whole nature of the European Project to date, the strongarm tactics, lies and spin, their very manner of going about business - that the very things Churchill spoke of those black radio nights will have to be spoken of again, only this time, minus a Churchill.

I'm in training and ready to rejoin Dad's Army but unfortunately, the enemy is already inside and in power in every region, in key posts in all fields. This time, Britain, no one is going to send up Spitfires, no one is going to rally us all together. This time, the vans will be sent to quietly mop up all known insurgents in a time of crisis - you, me and every blogger who has dared to speak out against this monstrosity.

Ireland must vote NO.

By the way, here's Vox Day's transatlantic interview with Dan Hannan, touching on why he [mistakenly] supported Obama, why he doesn't stand for a place in the UK parliament and including views on the BNP.

[special relationships] will oceania turn out to be the bloc of choice

You've obviously read this:

The government has sold its last remaining shares in the Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment in Berkshire to an American company. The move means Britain no longer has any stake in the production of its Trident nuclear warheads.

Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Nick Harvey said:

"The whole argument used for Britain having a separate weapons establishment is that this is required by the non-proliferation treaty, as technology sharing is not allowed."

Is this such a horrendous move? After all, the UK does not act in the foreign theatres in an independent fashion. More often than not, it is through NATO and the special alliances. On the nuclear issue:

The Amsterdam Treaty states in Article J.7 that "The policy of the Union in accordance with this article shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defense policy of certain Member States and shall respect the obligations of certain Member States, which see their common defence realized in NATO, under the North Atlantic Treaty and be compatible with the common security and defence policy established within that framework."

There is, in fact, a deep rivalry between the EU and NATO:

The lack of cooperation is evident in Brussels, where NATO and the EU have separate headquarters eight kilometers apart. On the military level, the two organizations have competing rapid reaction forces. They compete on foreign aid missions, sometimes racing each other to the destination. They maintain separate military planning headquarters. Taxpayers foot the double bill.

The countries at the center of this competition, analysts say, are Britain, which wants to preserve and strengthen NATO, and France, which wants the EU to grow into a more robust defense institution, independent of NATO.

The construction of NATO:

Originally consisting of 12 countries, the organisation expanded to include Greece and Turkey in 1952 and West Germany in 1955. However, then, as now, the alliance was militarily dominated by the United States.

In April, 2008:

President Bush advanced his plans Thursday to build a controversial missile defense shield in Eastern Europe by winning the unanimous backing of NATO allies and sealing a deal with the Czech Republic to build a radar facility for the system on its soil.

This set the cat among the pigeons - there is a souring of relations which manifested itself in the Poettering snub of President Klaus in the European Parliament and in the Declan Ganley matter. Europe is divided between the power bases of the EU itself, NATO and the U.S.A., a major player in its own right within European member states.

Digressing for the moment, it's old news that the EU parliament wants to silence dissenting voices but I also read, in the last few days, a proposal to prevent the UK from legally opting out of the European Union, should they wish to. I can't find corroboration anywhere for that one but it seems that 19 Labour MEPs plan to vote for that.

If that were so, it is yet more evidence that the socialistic EU is more than a little paranoid about Britain's further shift towards the U.S. - the warheads stake which opened this post is testimony to Britain's comfort in seeing U.S. strategic interests as not greatly different from our own.

Britain's ties to Europe are geographical and through the royal bloodlines but its ties to America are more "family like". Family members do fight but ultimately, when faced with a common foe, do close ranks. The U.S./British relationship has had its moments:

The United States put heavy pressure on the United Kingdom to dissolve its Empire, and this dissolution took place (due to post-war economic exhaustion, British public opinion and other factors, rather than U.S. pressure) in the 1947-1960 period.

... but it has ultimately stood firm. This special relationship has come under scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic:

The U.K. International Development Secretary has recently proposed a change in the current relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. He accentuated on the need for "new alliances, based on common values". He was verbal against "unilateralism" and called for an "international" and a "multilateralist" approach to global problems.

... and:

In candid comments that will embarrass Mr Bush and Mr Blair, [Kendall Myers, a leading State Department adviser, suggested] America "ignored" Britain [on Iraq], and he urged Britain to decouple itself from the U.S. He asserted that the "special relationship", a term coined by Sir Winston Churchill in 1946, gave Britain little or nothing.

"It has been, from the very beginning, very one-sided. There never really has been a special relationship, or at least not one we've noticed." The result of the Iraq war would be that any future British premier would be much less cosy with Washington than Mr Blair had been, and the Prime Minister's much vaunted view that Britain was "a transatlantic bridge" was now redundant.

Mr Myers said Donald Rumsfeld's comment before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 that America could go it alone without Britain had been a clarifying moment.

It remains to be seen how non-President-elect Obama redefines the relationship but such comments as the above are era specific and the overall history has been one of strong economic and undoubted cultural ties between the two, when all is said and done.

It was probably no accident that in Orwell's 1984, the blocs were:

The novel does not render the world's full history to 1984. Winston's recollections, and what he reads in The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein, reveal that after World War II, the United Kingdom fell to civil war, becoming part of Oceania. Simultaneously, the Soviet Union encompassed mainland Europe, forming the nation of Eurasia.

The third super-state, Eastasia, comprises the east Asian countries around China and Japan. Mentioned also is an atomic war, fought mainly in Europe, western Russia, and North America. It is unclear what occurred first: the civil war wherein the Party assumed power, the United States' annexation of the British Empire, or the war during which Colchester was bombed.

The hostility to the U.S. in Britain is as nothing to the hostility to the EU [read the comments as well]. There is life after the EU and Britain should look to re-integrating with its two strategic partners, the U.S. and the Commonwealth. Look at the trade figures alone and it's not as if we wouldn't trade, bilaterally with EU member states - it would go back to an EEC model in that respect.

Don't forget the Chinese in all of this:

[T]he news that CIC is putting $5 billion into Morgan Stanley gave a new perspective to Chinese involvement in the West’s largest financial institutions. The sheer scale of the Morgan Stanley deal was striking. And over the past few months, investment from the Far East has become almost commonplace. In contrast to the protectionist fervour that forced a Dubai company to sell several American ports that it acquired through the takeover of Britain’s P&O, there has been barely a murmur of opposition to this trend.

There is a definite unilateralist voice in America - this article decrying the financial ownership of the country by foreigners:

As www.economyincrisis.com notes, US Government statistics indicate the following percentages of foreign ownership of American industry:

* Sound recording industries - 97% * Commodity contracts dealing and brokerage - 79% * Motion picture and sound recording industries - 75% * Metal ore mining - 65%

... and so on and don't forget the SPPNA, which is due to kick off in 2009.

All that having been written though, I'd still say that blood is thicker than water and the most natural allies for Britain are still the U.S. and the Commonwealth. Within the UK, the problem would be the Scots and Welsh, for whom EU supported devolution would suddenly lose one of its main funding sources - British contributions to the EU.

The Scots and Welsh would then have a clear choice - remain with an ailing EU or rejoin the UK. With 83% of the UK English, they'd be in a bit of a quandary.