The elite still can't face up to it: Europe's model has failed

[CHIMO]

You might think that giving people a say in the most crucial decisions affecting their country would be second nature for a union of states that claims democracy as its most sacred founding principle. But George Papandreou's announcement that Greece would hold a referendum on the EU's latest shock therapy "rescue" plan was greeted with outrage across the chancelleries of Europe.

The Greek prime minister has now been summoned to the G20 summit in Cannes by Angela Merkel to be "read the riot act" over such reckless ingratitude. Last week's dose of new loans, 50% voluntary bank debt write-offs and yet more savage cuts and privatisations was supposed to have settled the matter and halted the threat of eurozone contagion – even if the deal's flakiness had already become painfully clear.

Papandreou's manoeuvre is, of course, a last-ditch attempt to save his political skin after months of mass street action over previous helpings of failed austerity that have driven Greek society to the brink. His government may fall and the referendum never be held, and even if it goes ahead Greeks will certainly be subjected to a barrage of threats and blackmail.

But the controversy goes to the heart of Europe's problem with democracy. It's not just fear of the risks of delay on febrile bond markets that has caused apoplexy, but the danger that Greeks might vote the wrong way. Voting is not how things are done in the EU. And whenever a state does actually consult its people – Denmark and Ireland had a go – they are made to vote again until they get it right.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/02/elite-europe-model-failed

[PoliticAverse]

1. "they are made to vote again until they get it right.". Yup. n/t

[Matilda]

2. The man who founded the Bilderberg Group also devised the plan for the European Union

Joseph Retinger, the founder of the Bilderberg Group, was also one of the original architects of the European Common Market and a leading intellectual champion of European integration. In 1946, he told the Royal Institute of International Affairs (the British counterpart and sister organization of the Council on Foreign Relations), that Europe needed to create a federal union and for European countries to “relinquish part of their sovereignty.” Retinger was a founder of the European Movement (EM), a lobbying organization dedicated to creating a federal Europe. Retinger secured financial support for the European Movement from powerful US financial interests such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Rockefellers.<3> However, it is hard to distinguish between the CFR and the Rockefellers, as, especially following World War II, the CFR’s main finances came from the Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation and most especially, the Rockefeller Foundation.<4>


The Bilderberg Group acts as a “secretive global think-tank,” with an original intent to “to link governments and economies in Europe and North America amid the Cold War.”<5> One of the Bilderberg Group’s main goals was unifying Europe into a European Union. Apart from Retinger, the founder of the Bilderberg Group and the European Movement, another ideological founder of European integration was Jean Monnet, who founded the Action Committee for a United States of Europe, an organization dedicated to promoting European integration, and he was also the major promoter and first president of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the precursor to the European Common Market.


http://www.regards-citoyens.com/article-35805980.html


I don't like these products of secret dealings between shady people behind closed doors, so if the whole idea is really a plot for big players to make more money out of little people, I wouldn't be sorry to see it fail, although I confess to not knowing how the financial dealings between countries would impact on individuals if this happened.

[yurbud]

3. voting is not how things are done when the bankers call the shots. We need to neuter their

stranglehold on humanity.