Zee ----------'s Library tagged sovereignty-usa →  View Popular

What the strikers at the Lindsey oil refinery (and their brother supporters in Nottinghamshire and Kent) have discovered is the real meaning of the fine print in those treaties, and the significance of those European court judgments whose interpretation they left to EU obsessives:

It is now illegal – illegal – for the government of an EU country to put the needs and concerns of its own population first. It would, for example, be against European law to do what Frank Field has sensibly suggested and reintroduce a system of "work permits" for EU nationals who wished to apply for jobs here.

Meanwhile, demonstrators in Paris and the recalcitrant electorate in Germany are waking up to the consequences of what two generations of European ideologues have thrust upon them: the burden not just of their own economic problems but also the obligation to accept the consequences of their neighbours' debts and failures. Each country is true to its own history in the way it expresses its rage: in France, they take to the streets and throw things at the police, in Germany they threaten the stability of the coalition government, and here, we revive the tradition of wildcat strikes.

he experience of Europe over the last 60 years demonstrates that the creation of a common market is only a first step toward more thorough integration. The European Union itself started life as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), an intergovernmental organization formed in the aftermath of World War II ostensibly to give a boost to the coal and steel industries in European nations ravaged by war.

But the ECSC was only meant to be a first step to further economic and (eventually) political integration. In 1957, it was superseded by the European Economic Community (EEC) that was created by the Treaty of Rome. The EEC, which was also known as the Common Market, became the European Community, the immediate predecessor of today’s European Union.

The progression from common market to political union as it occurred in Europe should not be mistaken for a singular and unusual event. It is, in fact, the process through which other international political mergers are expected to occur. The process was explained by University of Nevada professor of economics Glen Atkinson. In a paper published in the Social Science Journal entitled “Regional Integration in the Emerging Global Economy,” Professor Atkinson explained:

• Former Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) — now senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., another group promoting U.S.-EU integration;
• Democratic Congressman Ron Kind of Wisconsin, who has been an active supporter in Congress of regional free trade agreements;
• Former Congressman Mike Oxley (R-Ohio), infamous coauthor of the notorious Sarbanes-Oxley Act that, as described by Congressman Ron Paul, unconstitutionally gave “the federal government authority to regulate the accounting standards of private corporations” in the wake of the Enron and other financial scandals of the early part of the decade.



In addition to these U.S. legislators serving in leadership positions with TPN, there are many others who are members of TPN’s “U.S. Congressional Group.” These include six senators — the aforementioned Senator Bennett of Utah, Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) — and 49 representatives. Some of the noteworthy members of the latter cohort include former Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), recently deceased Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee John Dingell (D-Mich.), and current House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). It seems that selling out U.S. sovereignty is a very popular and bipartisan pastime.