If you can't win the argument, go for the man. That's the mantra of politicians down the ages. Mark Mardell, the BBC's man in Brussels reports that EU stalwarts are now launching a smear campaign against Declan Ganley, the man who spearheaded the Irish No vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendum. They are deploying the same dirty tricks against him which were used by the European Commission authorities against fraud whistleblowers Paul van Buitenen and Marta Andreasson. They are trying to insinuate that he is controlled by the CIA, can you believe. They really fear his nascent Libertas movement, which is intending to field candidates in next year's Euro elections.
Read Mark Mardell's piece HERE.
23 comments:
Be careful: Mardell refers only to a "senior politician" for his quotes. No sign if this is a politician in Brussels or Dublin (or London for that matter). Mardell is based (and lives) in Brussels, so it may well be there, but he travels a lot too.
"Never assume, always check", as my septagenarian father always tells me after I've jumped to a conclusion.
Doesn't this really show just how undemocratic the EU is!
It stops whistleblowers by sacking them, thus placing a greater fear on those that may have wished to reveal further discrepencies!
It wants to regulate the internet to stop Blogs etc, from saying anything but the party line!
It denigrates anyone and anything in its path!
Never forgetting that its accounts have never been signed off!
And this great country, The United Kingdom which rescued Europe, with massive help from the United States of America, from the threat of a thousand year Reich! and latterly from the soviet communist empire, IS PART OF THIS!
And people still want to be part and parcel of this rotten, corrupt organisation.
Perhaps, Iain, this is Brown's plan B hand the UK over lock stock and barrel!
You should lose the comma before "which". If "which" = "that" there should be no comma.
They are trying to insinuate that he is controlled by the CIA, can you believe. "
Two points, firstly despite the virulent anti-American xenophobia of many EU-philes the USA is generally pro EU, so would in all likelyhood oppose Ganley.
Secondly given the CIA track record of incompetence over 5 decades it would be a disaster for eurosceptics to be controlled by them.
This is the last straw for this corrupt, treacherous, Britain-hating Labour so-called "government".
To try to silence a decent man like this, unfortunately, is exactly what we have come to expect from Brown, Blair, Kinnock and their ilk. Labour hates England so much it is desperate to rear all our cherished powers to the Eurocrats - and anybody who dares utter a word against it must be destroyed. This has happened before in Europe, you might remember.
Fortunately, the people of England - a proud people - will not stand for it. They love their country and thirst for a government who will start pulling back powers from Brussels and back where they belong - in the hands of the English people.
And we will have such a government soon, my friends. A Conservative government.
It's all a bit ironic given that for several decades the European Movement was funded by the CIA (not even secretly, it's all in public documents).
"having German Satellite TV installed"
Ooohh, Matron !!
that's it, keep an eye on what they are up to...
The Irish Times has published a letter from Communications Commissioner Margot Wallström, sent in mid-July to her fellow Commissioners, titled "Communication Policy and the Irish Referendum - Lessons Learned and the Way Ahead". In the letter, Wallström sets out a number of proposals on "how best to inform the public and gain their confidence and support" for the Lisbon Treaty and the EU.
She says that lessons from the Irish referendum campaign include: "The more emotive No campaign worked better than the more factual Yes; not enough was done by the Yes campaign to reach out to young people and women; the internet was almost exclusively used by No campaigners; there was no effective rebuttal of misinformation about the Treaty".
In order to address these "problems", Wallström calls for "misinformation" to be targeted "by activating a rebuttal function in the member states and/or directly from Brussels". She also says the Commission needs to address wider audiences, through TV, radio and internet, which would involve the acceleration of strategies to develop a new TV network, the overhaul of its website, development of the EU Tube services, modelled on YouTube, and greater use of blogs. She states, "This Commission has taken the decisions to modernise and change the Commission's approach to communication that can be summed up by: Two-way communications (listening as much as talking; responding to citizens' interests and concerns)..."
Irish Times Irish Times Wallstrom letter
Blimey, where's Dolly Draper?
I suppose anybody suggesting that Bean's meglomania is now becoming more and more visible will also be smeared. Bean's "ordering" this, that and the other now. He fancies that he (and no-longer Canary Wharf) is "Master of the Universe". An Antony Eden moment.
As for the EU - no change there in their tatics, but at this rate there won't be an EU if countries owed money by others start asset siezing.
Eire vote NO
Welcome to the new European Soviet - where dissidents aren't tolerated and stand in opposition at their own risk.
Brown "ordering" things? Has he got a bunker? Will nobody think of the poor alsatian?
Hello there, John Bull, bless you.
surely its time for us to leave this incompent and corrupt bunch of meglomaniacs
(yes I know it fits NuLab but I mean the Euro`s this time)
Alright, I confess. I am one of Declan Ganley's mystery backers. I sent him 20 quid and it was well worth it.
If I had known he was getting paid by the CIA or KGB or the Elders of Zion or Daddy Warbucks I might have asked him to send me 20 quid but that's life.
At least I didn't send it to Iceland.
PS If they force another referendum, I'll send 50 Pounds.
For an excellent overview of the general processes behind the slide into totalitarian dictatorship (which is surely where things are presently headed, barring a miracle) I can recommend the book 'Mental Seduction and Menticide' by Meerloo Joost, a true expert in the field. The books seems pretty much as topical now as it did in the late '50s when it was published, and to be honest it is absolutely bloody terrifying how easily man can be enslaved. Fascinating but genuinely terrifying. Seek out a copy if you can ('they' wouldn't want you to, which is as good a reason as any); mine came from a 2nd hand bookshop but I suppose it will be out there online somewhere too.
Those transparent, honest and accountable eurocrats are completely qualified to dig for dirt.
Re. German TV. I once needed a TV guide and randomly chose one of the cheapest from the mass available in the Bahnhof Höchst newsagent.
When I opened it up on the train, in full view of other passengers, I had one hell of a shock: next to the TV listings there were pictures of attractive females mostly wearing either nothing or just stockings.
For the first time I looked at the title, TV-Sünde. I then realised what I'd just bought: a magazine called TV-Sin pointing out all the naughty bits in the forthcoming TV.
You just have to hand it to the Germans sometimes; to have the nerve, the non-hypocrisy, to produce that. The closest we have is faux-outrage in the tabloids e.g. Blackeyes generated the headline Dirty Den's Pervy Peep-Show.
Presumably if something called Schwarzaugen ever goes out on German TV, Bild would cover it with 'if you want to know when to switch over, Fr. Bellman gets her grosse Titten aus um 21:17, 21:39 und 21:54'.
(except of course, it would go out early evening in Germany)
Interestingly, Ganley wants a democratically elected European President with significant powers. Are you sure you are on his side Iain?
Not that it's quite so unlikely the CIA take an interest as Iain suggests... there is actually a long history of CIA (and other foreign security service) involvement in UK and European politics. Read for example Joe Klein's books, where he reveals that Clinton received regular reports from the CIA on their interventions with the British media on various subjects.
I'm rather amused by how the EU was populated by countries, all of whom are "meant to work together".
Haven't seen much evidence of that in recent days.
Declan Ganley is a neocon. But not on the grounds that his detractors allege.
Ganley is busily trying to turn his think tank into an EU-wide political party. As if that were not bad enough in itself, he wants that party to campaign for a President of the European Union modelled on the President of the United States.
This is fully in keeping, not only with the policy of every American Administration since the 1940s, but also with the Statement of Principles of the Henry Jackson Society, which calls for a single EU defence "capability" under overall American command and run by the Germans, although that role may now have passed to the French in these days of Sarkozy.
When Cameron made Andrew Adonis Education Secretary and William Hague a European Commissioner (a job to which, as a non-bastard Cabinet Minister from the Maastricht days, he would be perfectly suited), he would confer the position of Foreign Secretary on Michael Gove. Of the Henry Jackson Society.
You have been warned.
The Tories do not want to take us out of the EU, so no matter how many times you hear complaints on Tory blogs like this one, please take it with a pinch of salt. It's about image, not reality and this is the game they are playing.
You hear similar things on Conservative home but don't be fooled.
Declan Ganley also follows the Tory line that the EU can somehow be reformed and if he were to put up candidates in the UK it would hurt the Conservatives more than UKIP.
It doesn't matter if Ganley is controlled by the CIA or from the Planet Zog. Apparently there are enough Irish who wish to join him in his delusion. It's called Democracy.
Then again, the EU Treens would not understand that.
Ukipwebmaster, I heard Iain on the radio on Saturday, correctly, if surprisingly, saying that "probably half" of UKIP's European vote last time had come from people who would normally vote Tory.
Certainly, it was no more than that: add together the Tory and UKIP votes in any of the three Northern regions, or in either of the two Midland regions, or in the South West, or even in Scotland or Wales, and you arrive at a ludicrously high figure for the natural Tory vote there. It certainly did not happen like that.
UKIP is busily imploding. Its star turn from last time hasn't been a member for years. Its Leader was bumped off Question Time last week to make way for someone from the CBI, while Janet Street-Porter was kept on.
And its actually quite interesting programme has been written up as a book by a Tory MP and a Tory MEP, as the putative programme for a future Tory government certainly not headed by David Cameron or George Osborne, i.e., as the basis for a successful or unsuccessful putsch in the next Parliament.
Meanwhile, the BNP has taken UKIP's seat on the Greater London Assembly. It only needs one ninth of the votes cast (not the eligible vote, the votes cast) to get a Strasbourg seat there in June. One eighth in the North West. A mere one tenth in the South East. And so on. Its supporters are far more likely to vote, because they are angrier people.
Thanks to the complacency of those who set the agenda in this country, the BNP is home and dry in eight out of nine English regions (we in the North East would only be spared by having a mere three seats to fill), and well on course for two seats in at least three of them.
Well, some of us are determined to stop that, and to give last time's normally Labour or (especially in the West Country) Lib Dem UKIP voters somewhere to go. They would never vote Tory in a million years.
But can we get any publicity? Can we hell! When there are 11 BNP MEPs, entitling the BNP to seats on Question Time and Any Questions, then, just possibly, anyone might listen.
Now if you accept the silly hypothesis that there are these "EU elites" out to destroy democracy and crush all opposition under the jackboot, why would they be trembling in their boots at Declan Ganley?
In this country, his new party would just join the crowded field of gobby populist petit-bourgeois Mail reading xenophobes - UKIP, Veritas, now Libertas, BNP for the Sun readers - to split the vote between them and so none of them get a seat.
Ooh scary!
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