I remain a committed internationalist. For me, nation states are potentially extremely dangerous entities. They have the power to co-erce, brutalise and even lawfully to kill their own citizens. They regulate economic, commercial and societal transactions. They wield such power that contest among internal political leaders for control of that power can erupt into violent civil war. And they control such physical resources that nation states can launch war on each other in order to annex those resources or access their benefits.
Western democracy has, in my view, in general been the happiest form of government in modern society, in controlling the internal use of power through democratic mechanisms and in spreading welfare benefits among its citizens, while allowing the economy to function relatively efficiently.
But there have been three developments to jolt us from the notion that the emergence of western democracy represents a development in an inexorable trend of human progress. The notion of historical “progress” is one in which my generation was brought up implicitly to believe. I for one believed in it consciously and explicitly.
The first and most obvious development is the realisation that, while western democracies have more or less eliminated open violence in their internal political arrangements for control of resources, they are increasingly liable to resort to open warfare to gain control over the benefit of the resources of other nations, particularly as those resources become more scarce and valuable. Anybody who truly believes that it is coincidence that Iraq, Libya and Central Asia are hydrocarbon rich, and the major areas of Western military activity, is wilfully blind. There was nothing new about neo-imperialism and its recent manifestation as liberal interventionism is no more than a rehash of standard imperial propaganda on the spreading of civilised values.
What is new is the destruction of the notion that we Western democracies had got morally better and had moved on from the crude war as resource grab. What is also new is the extraordinary use of modern mass media to propagandise the inhabitants of western democracies into such fear of an alien threat, that the government can withdraw numerous liberties and extend vastly its power for everyday physical coercion – which at the most mundane level dawned on Andrew Mitchell last week. The fact that the public accepted 17,000 members of the armed forces guarding the Olympics from nobody at all, and that the armed forces were mentioned in every single public speech by a British politician or official in the Olympic ceremonies, to wild applause, gives but one example of the extraordinary militarisation of Western societies.
The second development is the galloping increase in the gap between rich and poor, in virtually every developed economy. In the UK the normalisation of the extreme concentration of wealth, and the neutering of the political forces for redistribution, constituted the real achievement of Blairism. The wealth gap between directorial and non-directorial incomes in British society has been growing at approximately ten per cent a year for two decades.
This development has been worsened by an abandonment of regulatory mechanisms that modified capitalism, and particularly the tendency of the financial services sector through oligopoly to take vast rent out of simple commercial transactions for which they should be the mere facilitator, at the same time inventing gambling transactions and other artificial processes of cash multiplication with which to tempt the wealthy and the fundholders within their own industry. The epitome of this transfer of wealth was, after the inevitable bubble disintegration, the payment by the state of huge sums to the financial services industry, using the power of the state to coerce the population through taxes to hand over sums amounting in total to several years income each.
Which leads me to the third adverse development – the concentration of media ownership in the hands of the extremely wealthy, the control by the same interests of the mainstream political parties, and therefore the lack of effective choice before the electorate on issues like the bank bailout, where the media and politicians combine to limit the sphere of public debate that will be carried to present only tiny variations on a single alternative. The same is true, for example, of the war in Afghanistan. Without an effective choice being offered to the electorate between real policy options, the notion of democracy is meaningless. That is where the western democracies now are.
Nation states, therefore, even the best of them, are dangerous entities which employ force against their own and other citizens and can be an active danger to international peace. The regulation of relations between states by international law to reduce conflict is therefore an urgent necessity. Some countries are much more danger than others: Ghana, to take one example, has never invaded anybody while the United Kingdom has at various times invaded or bombed the territory currently occupied by three quarters of the states in the World, while the United States projects deadly physical force overseas by a variety of means on a daily basis. Reining in these rogue states is a major priority.
There exists a body of international law which ad been gaining in respect and conformity in the decades since the Second World War, but both the United States and United Kingdom, and others following the neocon lead, have in recent decades driven a coach and horses right through the fabric of international law, through invasion, extraordinary rendition, torture, detention without trial, indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations, targeted extra-judicial killings by shootings or by drones, murder of journalists in war zones, and so on in a depressing litany.
Fundamental platforms of international law violated by the UK, US and their neo-con allies from the BushBlair period on include: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, The Nuremberg Principles, The Charter of the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions, and the Hague Convention. Recently the UK was proposing in effect to tear up the Vienna Convention too.
My conclusion is twofold. Firstly that international law needs to be radically strengthened in order to come back into repute. Secondly that the idea of the nation state as the basic unit of political organisation should be radically attacked; that the period of history is past in which the development of the nation state was a force for the good of its citizens and the world community.
I believe that the nation state should be attacked from top and bottom. From the bottom, as societies internationalise the idea of an ethnic basis to state boundaries becomes anachronistic. Advantage should be taken of this trend to deconstruct states from within, breaking them down into a combination of smaller states and/or of powerful autonomous regional polities. We need to see many more states split up, especially among the westen democracies but also very definitely Russia, China, India and states in their orbit.
From the top, and with particular reference to the UK, I view the European Union as an excellenct prototype of the sort of organisation that can attack the sovereignty of national states from above. Nobody dares to say this should happen – when those few Europhiles brave enough to state their beliefs talk of greater integration, they talk of “pooling sovereignty” to disguise from themselves and their listeners the fact that what they really mean is appropriating and destroying national sovereignty – and a damn good thing too.
In the UK, national schadenfruede at the problems of the Euro is almost universal across the political spectrum, which is why I trailed this as my most unpopular post ever. How foolish, British media and politicians gloat, of those silly Europeans to undertake the biggest single economic step in the history of mankind! How wise we were to stay on the sidelines sneering!
The problem of the Euro, as I observed a decade ago and everyone now agrees, is that a currency union is not really feasible without a fiscal union. The answer to that is a fiscal union. Where the European Union has gone wrong is not that it has gone too far in integration, but that it has not gone nearly far enough.
After a period of disastrous free-for-all, what we now have is a de facto fiscal union in the Eurozone in which the German government in effect dictates policy – in this case austerity policy – to everyone else. Democracy is now even more meaningless to the Greeks and Spaniards than it is to the rest of us.
The cause of this is the fundamental weakness of the European Union – its deference to the nation states it should be eliminating. Executive power within the European Union needs to be removed completely from the nation states in the Council of Ministers, or Council of German Orders as it should be better known now.
The executive body of the European Union should rather be dependent on, and largely drawn from, a majority of the European Parliament. That parliament divides along ideological, not nationalistic lines and does provide a much broader range of representation of opinion than most national parliaments.
The existing European Commission would become simply the Civil Service to this new, democratically elected, European Government. The European Commissioners themselves, devoid of administrative responsibilities which would pass to the new parliamentary ministers, might form some kind a second chamber, of a deliberative and revising nature, to the European Parliament. Rather like the US Senate, this would give a balance of due consideration to the interests of smaller nations; it might also encourage the break-up further of over-large “national” units to ensure more second chamber representation.
The question of subsidiarity and the balance of powers between the new democratic European government and national and regional governing bodies, should be the subject for a book not an article. But I would move virtually every power of a nation state either up or down. Fiscal policy, foreign policy and defence should all be exclusively at the European level.
The problems of the European Union multiplied when it adopted the philosophy of variable geometry, of inner and outer cores, of fast track and slow track members. For the single currency and single market to succeed, unity must be much tighter. If the European Union is serious about maintaining Europe’s position in the World against the mergence of China, India and South America it must conform to the logical force behind its existence. In economic terms that means not just the free movement of goods, but the free movement of capital and labour as well. So to be in the European Union should mean being in the Euro and being in Schengen too. The alternative should be to leave; and be treated as an outsider. The EFTA free ride must finish.
I view the European Union as a wonderful thing. It is a cliche to note that in my parents’ lifetime Europeans were fighting against each other in the grimmest war imaginable, and yet now are embarked together on a great political and economic project. The peace of Europe, and the freedom I have to move around Europe, to work study or settle there, is simply wonderful.
Let us make it even better. Let us get rid of those pesky internal borders and immigration countrols and those huge foreign exchange costs that benefit nobody but the bankers. And let is get rid of our God-awful national governments.
Chris Jones @4:08pm
I hope not and keep going back to the article looking for rays of light. I certainly hope the new strengthened international law would have retroactive jurisdiction, no clean sheet fresh start for egregious transgressors of existing international laws. But then hidden unelected kleptocrats rule already, democracy a sham, any attempt to determine the people’s will on such weighty matters would merely seek dubious legitimacy for changes already in effect. I can’t criticise CM for laying out his pet scary dystopia, as long as we get to reject it utterly; both this United Kingdom and the European Union in its present form, examples of amalgamation and uniformity gone too far. Micro-nations the only viable way.
Cryptonym and Chris Jones – I too have been wondering what exactly has “informed” this post.
@Cryptonym – Nicely put. There is certainly a place for real robust international institutions to protect global civilisation, especially in law,science,biological/WMD’s and pollution control, but these do not have to be at the expense of the sovereignity of nation states,however small or big they may be. These mutual interests can exist together.Same with Europe:Europe is a magnificent continent and it’s people have a great deal in common but forming the EU as an union state, as it almost is, would be playing straight in to the hands of the global banking meglamaniac creeps.
As Keelan Balderson wrote on his wideshut site “If the Eurozone crisis has taught us anything, it’s that global governance and stringent multilateralism simply doesn’t work. As sovereign independent nations the world is diversified, stable and answerable to the individual. Centralizing power broadens the impact of failure”
If what he is arguing is an attack on all nation states then this post is highly irresponsible and cock eyed.I know Craig is a gentleman but does gentlemeness have to equate to naivety? Seems like, on this at least, Craig has been done like a kipper. What he’s talking about is exactly what the eugenecist English Zionists of the Rhodes Milner group with an unfortunate line in god complexes have been trying to cook up for years.
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I am saddened to read this essay. It is so wrong I don’t know where to start. It is all NWOspeak. I am gobsmacked, tbh. Craig would do well to have a listen to Alan Watt at http://www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com
Watt nails Agenda 21, the global warming scam, the EU scam, the money scam, the peak oil scam, the farce of the two party cabal that ensures no democracy what.so.ever
And all the rest.
Even David Icke nails it all, read any of his books and you will see, CE needs to read all Icke’s books, then he might, just might, wake up from his happy happy never had it so good idiocy.
Perhaps Craig should come and live in Ireland for a year. His thinking on the EU might change. A lot.
But what would Sir Denis Eton-Hogg say??
Wikispooks.
I bow to you!
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Ditto!
I do not know what Keelan Balderson define’s as sovereignty, it is a wholly prehistoric notion, a leftover from the Victorian age, surely.
With today’s in flagranti use of sovereignty sapping flying objects, of varying description, the meaning of the term either has to be re negotiated by the UN, or go the way so many bad habits have become normal custom, continuous rogue use and slowly creeping acceptance, a la Dershowitz arguments for torture, the end justifies the means.
I would love to declare UDI here in Norfolk, its only one single road into Suffolk that does not go over a bridge, it would be easy to put water between Britain and Norfolk, a sovereign state.
Off course we would instantly exchange ambassadors with Scotland and all those countries who are dependent on Norfolks unique brand, the best barley in the world. We are also home to the only english wiskey brewery, so there are other mutualities.
sadly we would have to requisition Sandringham, but we put that to good use, who wouldn’t want to stay a night there and pay for it. The Corgies can stay.
We would also have to ask our two US bases to shut up shop and take their nukes home.
There would be no elections in Norfolk, Government and representation would be by random allocation, strictly gender balanced, elections are far too expensive, open for fraud and as unpopular as the political party’s and the system itself.
Randomly chosen reps. can reject the paid job, which woukld mean another name is pulled by the computer, national insurance numbers would do, or addresses, very easy to rig up , all the info is on a post office disk. Cheap, fair and representative.
Jeez, just woke up, did I say this? Something to spin out, a comedy drama perhaps….
‘The problems of the European Union multiplied when it adopted the philosophy of variable geometry, of inner and outer cores, of fast track and slow track members. For the single currency and single market to succeed, unity must be much tighter.’
Craig’s solution here really would be spell the end of the ‘European project’. Schengen, and the idea of ‘variable geometry’ that was born with it, has been going since 1985. ‘Variable geometry’, since the mid 80s, has been an essential pre- requisite to both the UK’s continued membership of ‘Europe’ AND to the expansion of the Union from 10 to 27 member states that began with the admission of Spain & Portugal in 1986.
As for unity in the single market needing to be much tigher, well, on whose terms would that unity be predicated ? If, as is happening now, German terms prevail, it is patently obvious that the Greeks, Spaniards & others reject the view that these terms have any legitimacy. If however the boot was on the other foot, the Germans, Austrians, Dutch & Finns would feel similarly aggrieved. There is simply no ‘democratic’ way of squaring the Euro circle.
However I’ll do my best to keep Craig in his Euro Reverie/stupor and recommend his attendance at this Euro wankfest at the LSE next month !
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2012/10/20121008t1830vOT1.aspx
Nevermind LOL.
The corgis are dying out just like the monarchy.
Can you believe that good licence fee money was spent on this piffle?
In Pictures:The Queen’s Corgis
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-19542050
Wikispooks, an inherently unsustainable financial system prepared to gamble against the forthcoming chaotic weather patterns/Governments is bound to fail the environment. But there are some people who are young, very bright and understanding and who are trying to bring about an attitude change.
Without having sustainable financial systems that work on all levels, and it might have to mean giving up the gambling, is the only way the world will ever get on to a sustainable path.
http://www.sustainablefinancialmarkets.net/about/
Now that even Craig Murray has succumbed to the dark side – for which he may all along have been one of many irons in the fire, denouncement of torture just a stunt to buff up his alternative, outsider credentials, got cold on the fringes wants back in the convivial warm – where can anyone go but underground. Limited hang-out, honeypot here.
How dare you not have all the answers and please everyone all the time, but this?
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Lol, well I did call Craig a Machiavellian shill on the first French Massacre thread. Once a diplomat, always a diplomat, once a spook, always a spook, the old school tie rules, and Wikispook’s blindingly obvious point is not even on the radar. Unless that point is accepted, all you will is act as SAYANIM for the dynastic banking plutocrats. Round them all up and put them on Devil’s Island.
We need a system reset without them, a reboot and a new OS!
Very interesting post and some excellent replies.Nobody,Nevermind,Mark Golding,Vronsky, Ben Franklyn,Mary.You’ve stirred it up again Craig,Congrats.Afraid I favour fear of the psychos and their amoral lunacy that will always prevent sane humane governance whichever way you slice or mix the cake.
“There would be no elections in Norfolk, Government and representation would be by random allocation, strictly gender balanced…”
I have a better plan:
I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. It would be quite easy…heh, heh…at the bottom of ah…some of our deeper mineshafts. Euro-bureaucracy would never penetrate a mine some thousands of feet deep, and in a matter of weeks, sufficient improvements in dwelling space could easily be provided.
As for length of time: well let’s see now ah…cobalt thorium G….Radioactive halflife of uh,…I would think that uh… possibly uh… one hundred years.
It would not be difficult Mein Fuhrer! Nuclear reactors could, heh…I’m sorry, Mr. Murray. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plant life. Animals could be bred and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country, but I would guess that dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided.
And as for who stays up and…who goes down: well, that would not be necessary, Mr. President. It could easily be accomplished with a computer. And a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross-section of necessary skills. Of course, it would be absolutely vital that our top Guardian readers be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition. Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do. Ha, ha. But ah, with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten feminists to each mangina, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present Gross National Product within say, twenty million years.
You might think: wouldn’t this nucleus of survivors be so grief-stricken and anguished that they’d, well, envy the dead and not want to go on living? No, sir…excuse me…When they go down into the mine, everyone would still be alive. There would be no shocking memories of heterosexuality, and the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead! [involuntarily gives the Marxist salute and forces it down with his other hand]Ahhh!
I mentioned the ratio of ten feminists to each mangina. Now, this may necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as heterosexuals are concerned. And regrettably, yes, this would be so. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each mangina will be required to do prodigious…service along these lines, the feminists will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of an unnaturally stimulating nature.
[stands from wheelchair] Mein Führer, I can TROLL!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8NQficzZg
:} Wasn’t Peter Sellers talented? Excuse my name dropping, I met him once at some event. He was married to Britt Ekland at the time.
Oh dear Mary, you mentioned Britt Ekland of your own volition… Prepare the Wicker Man !
🙂
Well Craig, in your post a few days prior to this one, you said we weren’t going to like it. And you were right…
I wonder if you wrote this post with a chortle in mind and a chuckle on lips, ‘cos it ain’t anything like you’ve written before…
or
Are you practicing the thought/reaction control that we are subjected to by our Governments every day?
Continuing the Sellers theme, here is Bibi with his drawing of a ‘bermmb’ which I think is the phonetic way Sellers used to pronounce the word when in Clouseau mode.
‘Mr Netanyahu showed a drawing illustrating Iran’s alleged progress towards nuclear weapons.’
Laughable and given top billing on the BBC website.
Israel’s Netanyahu urges ‘red line’ over nuclear Iran
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19746994
So the real Craig Murray finally reveals itself, but doesn’t seem to realise it is the exact opposite of what it thinks it is.
I guess I should have known 4 years ago, from its 9/11 denial.
Welcome back into the house of Satan.
I feel sick.
Tony
Warning. Cast of first of this season’s Question Time on BBC1 now. First question was
Will there be riots here when the full effect of the cuts become apparent.
Jacob Rees Mogg
Danny Alexander
Harriet Harman
Kirstie Allsop
Steve Coogan
AVOID.
@Kempe ““The European regulations on Consumer Protection and Court of Human Rights are just a start.”
“I hope you’re not making the common mistake of linking the ECHR with the EU. The ECHR is operated by the Council of Europe (CoE) which is a totally different organisation. The CoE pre-dates the EU and already counts Turkey and the Russian Federation amongst it’s 47 members.”
Point taken. But the EU consumer protection regulations are not trivial and indeed have swept away decades of British injustice fostered by corporations exploiting ordinary people who were getting fed up to the back teeth of being screwed by small print and legal chicanery. I think that is something of value.
Some of the posts above give the impression this might as well be a thread on a UKIP forum, or perhaps posts at the foot of a Daily Mail article; somewhat out-of-character with the usual flavour here.
“Warning. Cast of first of this season’s Question Time on BBC1 now. First question was
Will there be riots here when the full effect of the cuts become apparent.
Kirstie Allsop”
Ugh!! The whore of property hype and ramping makes a re-appearance after she should have eaten her hat (for that’s what she promised if house prices went down). The housing bubble was the single most significant driver of our Europe wide recession, but she’s still around promoting it together with her partner “Phil” whose ludicrous company Garrington went belly up after house finders found his ridiculous fees and further property hyping too much to bear.
Just shows to what depths the BBC (and sadly Channel 4) have been complicit in promoting the “get-something-for-nothing” culture with their multiple property porn programmes which never once looked back and saw that inflating static assets rather than actually working for a living bankrupted this and half the nations in Europe.
Mary,
The ziofuckwit standing there and delivering his fairytale to a bunch of infants preschoolers needs that kind of graphics. Reminds of the 190donkey films of anarchists and Charlie Chaplin throwing their bombs after lighting them!!!
It is pitiful to see this wanker is even allowed to stand on that rostrum, uncivilised ziofuckwits have no place among civilised nations, but seeing as UN is still in US, what can be expected from it?
“Small is beautiful. The problem is not nations, but big nations – big economic entities that can throw their weight about – and if they can they will. If you want to see what a united and stateless Europe would look like and wonder how it would behave, look at the United States of America.
“The more remote the political centre is from the people the less accountable it becomes.”
I’m with Vronsky. Craig’s post appalls me. I campaigned against the ‘EEC’ in 1972 and have never changed my mind. If Craig can drag himself away from the UK perspective for two minutes, does he seriously think that Ireland would be better off in a politically united EU?
“I feel sick”
Me too, Tony.
Did anyone else watch Question Time?
I am 95% sure that Harriet Harman referred to our ex minister-for-the-Murdochs as Jeremy Cunt.
Please let it be true. Can anyone confirm?
So the real Craig Murray finally reveals itself, but doesn’t seem to realise it is the exact opposite of what it thinks it is.
I guess I should have known 4 years ago, from its 9/11 denial.
Welcome back into the house of Satan.
I feel sick.
Tony
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Gotta be a few fatties short of a sporran to swallow and embellish the 911 hoodwink.
And this is supposed to be a serious blog???
Hilarious 🙂
Warning. Cast of first of this season’s Question Time on BBC1 now. First question was
Will there be riots here when the full effect of the cuts become apparent.
Jacob Rees Mogg
Danny Alexander
Harriet Harman
Kirstie Allsop
Steve Coogan
AVOID.
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Oh I like to watch the enemy.
Lamp posts.
Baling wire.
“And this is supposed to be a serious blog???”
Breivik?