Helle unfriended

A leader falls abruptly from grace

WHEN Helle Thorning-Schmidt addressed the European Parliament on July 3rd to mark the end of Denmark’s six-month stint in the European Union’s presidency, her words fell on many empty seats. [...]
The Danish prime minister’s words to the press betrayed a little pique. “Why is everybody so keen to play down the results of the last six months?” she demanded. She had in mind deals on growth, jobs, energy efficiency and patents. Given the low expectations of her presidency, such umbrage is understandable.  [...]
Yet however unappreciated Ms Thorning-Schmidt feels in Europe, her real troubles are at home. A YouGov opinion poll for metroXpress newspaper gives her Social Democrats their lowest rating in over a century: 16.1%, a plunge from the 24.8% they took last September. [...]
Denmark is in better shape than the rest of the EU. Unemployment is officially 6.2%, against a euro-zone average of 11.1%; GDP edged out of a technical recession with a 0.4% jump in the first quarter. [...]
The budget deficit of 1.8% of GDP also compares favourably with much of Europe, but Denmark’s public spending (the highest in the EU as a share of GDP) must be cut because of demographic change. The government and opposition agree that the welfare state needs tweaking. Ms Thorning-Schmidt has set about reform with zeal. But she has alienated a good chunk of her supporters by agreeing on a tax package with the centre-right.
This will reduce the tax burden on average earners by raising the threshold for the top tax bracket; increase tax credits for those with jobs; and cut corporate taxes. These measures are to be paid for in part by reducing old-age pensions and unemployment benefits. [...]
The jilted left has now denounced the government. If Ms Thorning-Schmidt expects their votes to keep her in power, she will have to come up with some rewards, say the leftists. With a sense of betrayal also spreading among her own voters, the prime minister may struggle merely to complete the full four years of her term.

Photo and text from The Economist

The EU Communitarian Agenda And The New Feudalists

Communitarianism is a collectivist philosophy that explicitly rejects individualism. It does not merely relegate individualism to a subordinate position, but is openly hostile to it. It is an ideology of 'civic society' which is nothing less than one version of Post-Marxist collectivism which wants privileges for certain wealthy and influential organized groups, and in consequence, a renewed feudalization of society. --Vaclav Klaus.

Communitarianist Ideology
The European Union is a major aspect of the `New World Order` and the so called `sustainable development` movement. The main objective of the Federal European State to be, is absolute social, personal and economic control in a collectivist and corporatist society. The philosophy behind the EU is a strange mixture of Capitalism and Communism - a form of Euro Marxism which owes much of its dogma to the Pre World War II Italian Marxist Philosopher, Antonio Gramsci. The nearest ideology to that practiced by the EU is something called `Communitarianism`, or what Tony Blair called the 'Third Way'.

We are talking of a dialectical trap here, with Corporate money funding Socialism as Thesis, ideological Socialism as Antithesis and Communitarianism or the `new imperium` as Synthesis. Money grabs and concentrates power, whilst State Socialism promises the total redistribution of ownership and wealth. This contradiction provides an almost irresistible dynamic.

Communitarians want to create a post-modern, post-democratic feudal society run by a small number of rich and powerful people with everyone else working as peasants. In order to achieve their objectives they must destroy the middle class and the nation state. Can anyone deny that their goals are firmly on course.

One of the most mysterious aspects of the European Union from a `lay-man's` standpoint is the decision making process. Even with only the bare minimum of research, it becomes clear that we the people have little or no influence on any of the decisions reached in our name and the subsequent diktats which inevitably follow. In this article/essay, I will try and identify the ideology and aims of the key socio- economic decisions that drive the EU, and how because of these decisions, our lives are increasingly no longer our own.

The socio political economic agenda of the EU is carefully and intentionally buried beneath myriad layers of tedious and unintelligible `newspeak`. Despite this, in recent years, as the pace of so called EU 'reform' has quickened, many researchers like myself have begun to expose and unravel this intentionally obtuse and often ambiguous jargon and reveal it for what it really is: A tool of confusion and misinformation intended towards the enslavement of the peoples of Europe by the rule of diktat and economic servitude.

By Philip Jones

Read the full article at rense.com or nylonmanden.dk

Ten Reasons to Get Rid of the European Union

10. The EU Spreads a Culture of Lies and Corruption

After Irish voters had clearly rejected the Lisbon Treaty (the slightly changed, but otherwise recycled version of the European Constitution which had been rejected by French and Dutch voters earlier), Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark said Ireland should be given less than nine months to work out its problems with the Lisbon Treaty prior to the EU’s parliamentary elections in 2009. Rasmussen said that the Irish “no” vote to the Constitution should not stop further work by the Union toward getting the treaty ratified. European leaders, including Danish ones, have generally preferred ratification of the EU Constitution without popular referendums because they know there is powerful resistance to it in many countries. It is meaningless to have referendums if they only come when the elites want them to, and these elites can ignore them if they dislike the results.

Mr. Rasmussen is a great example of how the European Union slowly destroys the democratic system and is deliberately designed to do so. He is supposed to follow the will of and interests of his people, but his actual loyalty lies with the rest of the EU oligarchy. He’s by no means the worst person among EU leaders; this isn’t about his personal flaws, it’s about the EU and how it eventually corrupts even otherwise decent individuals. A similar thing happened in Portugal, where the PM responded to calls from the leaders of Germany and France, not his own electorate.

The EU is a slow-motion coup d’état conducted against dozens of countries simultaneously. It is designed to empty all organs subjected to the popular will of any real power and transfer it into the hands of an unelected oligarchy. In fact, it’s worse than a coup d’état because this traditionally implied that a group of people seized control over a country. The EU doesn’t just want to seize control over nation states; it wants to abolish them. The EU is organized treason.

The EU elites react as one when faced with challenges to their power base from ordinary people. MEPs in the European Parliament as well as participants at every level of the EU system get very well-paid jobs for taking part in it, which means that their pragmatic interests lie with maintaining it. Their loyalty has been bought — with the tax money of European citizens — and transferred from their people, where it theoretically should be, to the EU. The EU is their pension plan, so to speak. When you challenge the EU, you thus constitute a direct threat to their personal financial interests, and they will respond accordingly.

Just like the Soviet Union, the European Union promotes a culture of lies and corruption which starts at the top and filters down to society as a whole. The EU system corrupts virtually everybody who comes close to it. It cannot be reformed, it can only be dismantled.

Read the full article at Gates of Vienna

Danes see strict immigration laws under threat by EU

Nothing in Denmark is as popular politically as the strict policy on foreigners to which the prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, adheres. And so the recent ruling by the European Court of Justice affirming the right of family reunification within the European Union went down in Copenhagen like a bombshell. Rasmussen and a huge majority in the Danish parliament, together with leading media, plan to defend Denmark's immigration laws with all the means at their disposal.
"We'll make sure that you can't get around our rules on family reunification by going through back doors," Rasmussen told the Politiken newspaper this week.
According to the ruling by the Luxembourg-based court, the EU's highest legal body, EU members may not refuse entry or right of residence to non-EU spouses and family members. This means a Danish citizen, having worked in another EU country, could bring his or her spouse back to Denmark even if the spouse is a failed asylum seeker or previously resided illegally in the EU.
Under current Danish law, a Dane may not bring a non-EU spouse into the country unless both partners are at least 24 years of age. Other strict conditions must be met too. For example, the Dane must lodge a bond, and the pair must show they have a permanent home and that their ties to Denmark are stronger than to any other country.

Read more: The Earth Times

Danish immigration law under fire

A recent EU court immigration ruling is causing headaches for the Danish centre-right government and may deliver a blow to the country's immigration policies, which are amongst the most restrictive in Europe.

The European Union's highest court ruled last Friday (25 July) in a case of four couples living in Ireland that spouses of EU citizens who are not themselves EU citizens can not be prevented from living in the Republic.

Previously, under Irish law, a spouse from outside the European Union must have lived in another member state first in order to win residency rights. However the court ruled that this is in breach of EU law on the free movement of citizens.

Inspired by the new EU ruling, a number of couples turned up on Monday (28 July) at the Danish Ministry for Integration in Copenhagen demanding a review of the ministry's rejection of their applications to settle as couples in Denmark.

Having been denied residence in Denmark, many such couples settle in the city of Malmo in Sweden, about half an hour's drive from Copenhagen, as Sweden has less restrictive immigration laws.

The Danish parliament's ombudsman earlier in the summer announced an investigation into whether the Danish Immigration Service had misinformed individuals inquiring about regulations on the settling of foreign spouses in Denmark.

Danish newspapers are further reporting that a Danish common knowledge test for immigrants may also not be in line with EU rules.

In reaction, the Danish minister in charge of immigration, Birthe Ronn Hornbech, has now announced a review of the entire system of immigration in the country.

More: EUobserver