In the 2000 United States presidential election the US had a recount in Florida. This was due to the small margin by which Bush was leading and produced an automatic recount under Florida state law.
What was not under scrutiny were the candidates, Bush and Gore. These candidates were known to be the candidates for the new president and 250 or whatever million Americans knew this.
In 2016 President Trump won the election against Hillary Clinton. Whatever doubts and rumors some disappointed quarters had or still have about the outcome, every American knew the names of the two candidates for the White House.
Enter the shithole EU. It held an election for the new leader of the the next President of the European Commission. Here is the Wikipedia page with the candidates running. Nowhere will you find the name Ursula von der Leyen! She was never mentioned as a candidate even in Germany at the time before and during the elections. "... she has emerged from the shadows as the EU member states' nominee for the top job, after initial compromise deals collapsed". Even the alcoholic and former chief of the EU Commission Juncker said: "Naming of von der Leyen as EU executive chief not transparent".
Enough said. Here is, again, the interview with Bernard Connolly in 2016. Boy, was he right:
The EU is an “explicitly anti-democratic”, crony capitalist state.
Merryn: Hi, I’m Merryn Somerset Webb, editor-in-chief of Money Week magazine. Welcome to another one of our video interviews. Today we are extremely privileged – we have with us Bernard Connolly, who is one of only four economists who Mark Carney named in 2008 as having correctly anticipated and analysed the great financial crisis. He’s also the author of this particularly brilliant book: The Rotten Heart of Europe, which I have talked about many times, so regular readers will, I hope, have read it by now. If you haven’t, go out, get it and read it.
What we’re going to start by talking about today is a subject which is covered at some length in this: the European Union and, specifically, should Britain be leaving the European Union. There’s a big question for you.
Bernard: It’s an easy one to answer, Merryn. Yes, of course it should. And it should do that because the European Union is explicitly anti-democratic. It aims at eliminating the rule of law. It aims at instituting initially a sort of crony capitalism state that would quite quickly transmute into a bureaucratic socialist state.
It is oppressive. It is hypocritical. It has inflicted enormous misery on all its subject countries, most obviously of course through monetary union, which was presented as an economic mechanism but was always intended… And we have a former Commission president, Romano Prodi, to vouch for this. It was always intended to create economic crises which would push people into giving up more of their sovereignty, democracy, legitimacy, freedom. And sad to say it’s been very successful in that regard if in no other.
Stalin’s Soviet constitution of 1938 was the most perfectly democratic ever devised on paper. But Stalin ran an empire. The European Union is an empire.
Merryn: Well, let’s go back a bit to what you first said. It’s explicitly anti-democratic. Now, a lot of people will say: How can that be? We vote for MEPs. Our MEPs go and sit in the European Parliament. It might be not as directly representative as perhaps the Westminster Government but, nonetheless, that’s a democracy.
Bernard: Well I think there are three levels of an answer there. One is, if you like, the debating point answer to say: Stalin’s Soviet constitution of 1938 was the most perfectly democratic ever devised on paper. But Stalin ran an empire.
The European Union is an empire. It has imperial ambitions, which extend beyond its present borders. It has the ambition to create a multi-national army which, as John Stuart Mills said on representative government 150 years ago, has been the executioner of liberty throughout the ages.
Merryn: OK, but who is It, then? You talk about the EU as if it is not the parliament, what is it?
Bernard: It increasingly is Angela Merkel. Leaving that question aside for the moment – perhaps we’ll come back to it – it is a nomenklatura. It is a nomenklatura consisting of politicians, but even more so of bureaucrats, of bankers, of a certain number of academics, of media people. It’s Davos man with power rather than just a good lunch.
Merryn: And Davos man has power through the European Council?
WHEN ONE THINKS OF THE DISGUSTING, OBSCENE HORROR OF WAR, I DON’T KNOW HOW PEOPLE WHO ARE IN FAVOUR OF THE EUROPEAN UNION CAN SLEEP AT NIGHT
Bernard: Well, the European Council and the Council of the European Union, and naturally these two things are easy to confuse, but the European Council is the coming together of ministers in a specific area, in foreign affairs, in economics or transport or whatever. The European Council is the summit at which the heads of state or government gather whenever they do and stay up all night and drink coffee and come to so-called deals. But neither of those two processes has any democratic legitimacy. Neither the formal decisions of the Council of the European Union, nor the decisions of the European Council.
The European Parliament was rightly said by the German Federal Constitutional Court as long ago as 1993 as not having the potential to be the basis of a democratic system, and the reason the German Constitutional Court said that, was that for there to be a democratic system, there should be a demos. You know, in effect a community which is neither on the one hand just a collection of disparate individuals or groups, cults, sects, tribes, gangs, regiments, religions or whatever, nor on the other hand an empire.
And where the European Union is heading is towards a sort of very unfortunate amalgam of the two models. It is heading towards an anarcho-imperial state of which there have been several examples in history. Perhaps one of the most pertinent being the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And it was the clash of empires and particularly anarcho-imperial empires that produced the First World War. And when one thinks of the disgusting, obscene horror of war, I don’t know how people who are in favour of the European Union can sleep at night. Because what they are doing is creating a set of social tensions… By eliminating a political sense of national identity they’ve forced human beings, I’m not saying they do it deliberately. Perhaps they do. But certainly it has the effect…
Merryn: We hope they don’t.
Bernard: Of forcing human beings to seek a sense of belonging in something else. Whether it’s an ethnic sense, a racial, a religious, linguistic or whatever. And we’re starting to see that unfortunately happening.
Merryn: So we would say that the rise of nationalism in various countries across Europe is a direct result of that. The rise of various what we would consider to be extreme political parties is a direct result of the way the EU is working to eradicate cultural differences between nations.
Bernard: Well, I’m not sure it’s seeking to eradicate cultural differences. What it’s seeking to do is to eradicate the right of people to order their own existence. And in doing so, you know, people say: Why should I bother? I mean, what does it mean to be Swedish any more? What does it mean to be Danish? And they’re two very good examples at the moment. Do I define my Swedishness by the fact that I have a Swedish government which Sweden makes its own laws and makes laws only for itself? No, that doesn’t happen any more. What am I? Oh, perhaps I’m white Caucasian, and I don’t like all these Somalis who are coming into Sweden.
Now, whatever one thinks morally of that set of attitudes, it is a plain, observable, undeniable fact that those attitudes are quite directly related to the European Union’s attempt to abolish democratic legitimacy and the feeling that we run ourselves. If I’ve got no say in the way how things are run, let me forget about the political process. Let me forget about democracy. Let me define myself in terms of what I’m not. That I’m not a Somali. I’m not a Muslim. I’m not white. I’m not Christian. I’m not whatever I am. And one can see it, one can feel it, it is just happening in front of our eyes.
full interview here.
What was not under scrutiny were the candidates, Bush and Gore. These candidates were known to be the candidates for the new president and 250 or whatever million Americans knew this.
In 2016 President Trump won the election against Hillary Clinton. Whatever doubts and rumors some disappointed quarters had or still have about the outcome, every American knew the names of the two candidates for the White House.
Enter the shithole EU. It held an election for the new leader of the the next President of the European Commission. Here is the Wikipedia page with the candidates running. Nowhere will you find the name Ursula von der Leyen! She was never mentioned as a candidate even in Germany at the time before and during the elections. "... she has emerged from the shadows as the EU member states' nominee for the top job, after initial compromise deals collapsed". Even the alcoholic and former chief of the EU Commission Juncker said: "Naming of von der Leyen as EU executive chief not transparent".
Enough said. Here is, again, the interview with Bernard Connolly in 2016. Boy, was he right:
The EU is an “explicitly anti-democratic”, crony capitalist state.
Merryn: Hi, I’m Merryn Somerset Webb, editor-in-chief of Money Week magazine. Welcome to another one of our video interviews. Today we are extremely privileged – we have with us Bernard Connolly, who is one of only four economists who Mark Carney named in 2008 as having correctly anticipated and analysed the great financial crisis. He’s also the author of this particularly brilliant book: The Rotten Heart of Europe, which I have talked about many times, so regular readers will, I hope, have read it by now. If you haven’t, go out, get it and read it.
What we’re going to start by talking about today is a subject which is covered at some length in this: the European Union and, specifically, should Britain be leaving the European Union. There’s a big question for you.
Bernard: It’s an easy one to answer, Merryn. Yes, of course it should. And it should do that because the European Union is explicitly anti-democratic. It aims at eliminating the rule of law. It aims at instituting initially a sort of crony capitalism state that would quite quickly transmute into a bureaucratic socialist state.
It is oppressive. It is hypocritical. It has inflicted enormous misery on all its subject countries, most obviously of course through monetary union, which was presented as an economic mechanism but was always intended… And we have a former Commission president, Romano Prodi, to vouch for this. It was always intended to create economic crises which would push people into giving up more of their sovereignty, democracy, legitimacy, freedom. And sad to say it’s been very successful in that regard if in no other.
Stalin’s Soviet constitution of 1938 was the most perfectly democratic ever devised on paper. But Stalin ran an empire. The European Union is an empire.
Merryn: Well, let’s go back a bit to what you first said. It’s explicitly anti-democratic. Now, a lot of people will say: How can that be? We vote for MEPs. Our MEPs go and sit in the European Parliament. It might be not as directly representative as perhaps the Westminster Government but, nonetheless, that’s a democracy.
Bernard: Well I think there are three levels of an answer there. One is, if you like, the debating point answer to say: Stalin’s Soviet constitution of 1938 was the most perfectly democratic ever devised on paper. But Stalin ran an empire.
The European Union is an empire. It has imperial ambitions, which extend beyond its present borders. It has the ambition to create a multi-national army which, as John Stuart Mills said on representative government 150 years ago, has been the executioner of liberty throughout the ages.
Merryn: OK, but who is It, then? You talk about the EU as if it is not the parliament, what is it?
Bernard: It increasingly is Angela Merkel. Leaving that question aside for the moment – perhaps we’ll come back to it – it is a nomenklatura. It is a nomenklatura consisting of politicians, but even more so of bureaucrats, of bankers, of a certain number of academics, of media people. It’s Davos man with power rather than just a good lunch.
Merryn: And Davos man has power through the European Council?
WHEN ONE THINKS OF THE DISGUSTING, OBSCENE HORROR OF WAR, I DON’T KNOW HOW PEOPLE WHO ARE IN FAVOUR OF THE EUROPEAN UNION CAN SLEEP AT NIGHT
Bernard: Well, the European Council and the Council of the European Union, and naturally these two things are easy to confuse, but the European Council is the coming together of ministers in a specific area, in foreign affairs, in economics or transport or whatever. The European Council is the summit at which the heads of state or government gather whenever they do and stay up all night and drink coffee and come to so-called deals. But neither of those two processes has any democratic legitimacy. Neither the formal decisions of the Council of the European Union, nor the decisions of the European Council.
The European Parliament was rightly said by the German Federal Constitutional Court as long ago as 1993 as not having the potential to be the basis of a democratic system, and the reason the German Constitutional Court said that, was that for there to be a democratic system, there should be a demos. You know, in effect a community which is neither on the one hand just a collection of disparate individuals or groups, cults, sects, tribes, gangs, regiments, religions or whatever, nor on the other hand an empire.
And where the European Union is heading is towards a sort of very unfortunate amalgam of the two models. It is heading towards an anarcho-imperial state of which there have been several examples in history. Perhaps one of the most pertinent being the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And it was the clash of empires and particularly anarcho-imperial empires that produced the First World War. And when one thinks of the disgusting, obscene horror of war, I don’t know how people who are in favour of the European Union can sleep at night. Because what they are doing is creating a set of social tensions… By eliminating a political sense of national identity they’ve forced human beings, I’m not saying they do it deliberately. Perhaps they do. But certainly it has the effect…
Merryn: We hope they don’t.
Bernard: Of forcing human beings to seek a sense of belonging in something else. Whether it’s an ethnic sense, a racial, a religious, linguistic or whatever. And we’re starting to see that unfortunately happening.
Merryn: So we would say that the rise of nationalism in various countries across Europe is a direct result of that. The rise of various what we would consider to be extreme political parties is a direct result of the way the EU is working to eradicate cultural differences between nations.
Bernard: Well, I’m not sure it’s seeking to eradicate cultural differences. What it’s seeking to do is to eradicate the right of people to order their own existence. And in doing so, you know, people say: Why should I bother? I mean, what does it mean to be Swedish any more? What does it mean to be Danish? And they’re two very good examples at the moment. Do I define my Swedishness by the fact that I have a Swedish government which Sweden makes its own laws and makes laws only for itself? No, that doesn’t happen any more. What am I? Oh, perhaps I’m white Caucasian, and I don’t like all these Somalis who are coming into Sweden.
Now, whatever one thinks morally of that set of attitudes, it is a plain, observable, undeniable fact that those attitudes are quite directly related to the European Union’s attempt to abolish democratic legitimacy and the feeling that we run ourselves. If I’ve got no say in the way how things are run, let me forget about the political process. Let me forget about democracy. Let me define myself in terms of what I’m not. That I’m not a Somali. I’m not a Muslim. I’m not white. I’m not Christian. I’m not whatever I am. And one can see it, one can feel it, it is just happening in front of our eyes.
full interview here.
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