Wolf Journal

The European Union: The Land of the Blind

by David Richards


There is a land where the populace have become so blind to their system of governance that do not even know which country they live in.
The land of the blind is the new European Union federal state.

With the passing of the Lisbon Treaty on December 1 we are now all official citizens of this new entity with rights and duties superior to our national citizenship. All EU law now automatically supersedes national law, with about 90 per cent of our new laws coming directly from the EU. In fact, the EU will not even be run on the basis of nation states such as Britain, France or Germany but on transnational regions taking orders from Brussels.

While the EU may have been set up without provocative signs of statehood such as sports teams or military parades, we should be under no illusions that legally and in substance the Lisbon treaty is the capstone of a whole new country. The structure may be incomplete right now but will be quickly fleshed out because, and this is crucial, the Lisbon Treaty is a self-amending Treaty, which means it can expand and grant itself new powers as long as they are agreed upon by its internally ratified top politicians.

December 1, 2009 is a day that should be burnt in our collective psyche; because like the fall of the Berlin Wall it signifies a whole new era of global politics. National sovereignty in Europe has been slowly dismantled for decades, but on that fatal day it finally died. And yet, the vast majority of Europe’s nearly 500 million citizens have yet to realise what has happened. How long will it take them to realise that their nations are extinct? That their national symbols are antiques? Their national ceremonies are nothing more than a funeral march? The answer to these questions and the populaces’ subsequent reactions will surely be one of the great political experiments of our age.



The Soviet E-Union

What then, has been constructed away from the public’s glare?
The European Union is an extremely centralised, totalitarian form of government run in collusion with big financial and corporate interests, being held up by enormous bureaucracies.
The only people we can vote for are the MEPs, whose powers are limited to suggesting amendments to laws being put through and voted on in the higher echelons of the power structure. The European parliament is there to give a democratic aesthetic to the whole arrangement. It is what former chief accountant Marta Andreasen calls a ‘mickey mouse parliament’. Everyone else; the president, the commissioners and the council of ministers are all chosen internally without public approval.

Structurally, it is a replicate of the Soviet Union. As former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky explains:
‘If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union…
It is no accident that the European Parliament, for example, reminds me of the Supreme Soviet. It looks like the Supreme Soviet because it was designed like it. Similarly, when you look at the European Commission it looks like the Politburo. I mean it does so exactly, except for the fact that the Commission now has 25 members and the Politburo usually had 13 or 15 members [ will be around 18 under the Lisbon Treaty]. Apart from that they are exactly the same, unaccountable to anyone, not directly elected by anyone at all. When you look into all this bizarre activity of the European Union with its 80,000 pages of regulations it looks like Gosplan. We used to have an organisation which was planning everything in the economy, to the last nut and bolt, five years in advance. Exactly the same thing is happening in the EU. When you look at the type of EU corruption, it is exactly the Soviet type of corruption, going from top to bottom rather than going from bottom to top.’

Welcome then, to the EUSSR. You may wonder how a communistic power structure could work in harmony with the big financial and corporate interests that dominate the West. The reason is that a collectivist, planned economy is the perfect vehicle for monopoly capitalists. Taking control of government vastly increases their power and eliminates competition. Anthony C. Sutton explains this in his seminal book, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, ‘Monopoly capitalists are the bitter enemies of laissez-faire entrepreneurs; and given the weaknesses of social centralist planning, the totalitarian socialist state is the perfect captive market for monopolist capitalists, if an alliance can be made with the socialist powerbrokers.’

We can already see the results of this cosy union reflected in the enormous amount of EU corruption, with stories of hundreds of millions of Euros disappearing without trace. It is seen most clearly though in EU policy itself, for instance, in policies that are attacking small farmers while protecting big agricultural corporations pushing GM food. It is even clearer in the determined attack on trade unions and the introduction of policies designed to create a ‘race to bottom’ of wage and work standards across Europe.

This form of government has clearly been designed to work in harmony with monopoly capitalists. Therefore it is no surprise that the vast majority of the EU’s policies and commission statements are based on the policy papers of BusinessEurope, the umbrella group for corporate interests in Europe. Journalist David Cronin gives a striking example, ‘This week Barroso issued a "consultation", ostensibly designed to kick off a debate on what the EU's strategic goals should be for the coming decade. The top two priorities it identified were to improve the "knowledge-base" of the European economy and to ensure that its labour markets become more "flexible". Can it be a coincidence that Jürgen Thumann, the president of BusinessEurope, urged that the EU set exactly the same two priorities in a speech earlier this month?’

Clearly then, when the European elite talk about a ‘progressive’ and ‘dynamic’ Europe for the 21st century they are talking about one designed in their interests, not ours. They must be, because if their plan comes to full fruition then we will be living in a new feudal system where the bankers and corporations act as our overlords.
This is our new government. What can we do to change it? We may wave our hands in the air and cry treason to the establishment, but as Lord Christopher Monckton notes: ‘It is indeed treason: but the UK courts are now mere rubber-stamps for the dictators.’ If you haven’t got it yet; the British powerbrokers wanted this. Any hope of changing it will have to come from massive grassroots resistance from the people of Europe, but for this to happen one day, we must all first realise in which country we live.

On Facebook: Electric Sheep get Online!!

By David Richards


… The Cold air stung us and we played until our bodies glowed…



A lot has been written about Facebook’s role as a surveillance tool. All information posted on its networks is owned by Facebook and used freely by government agencies, advertisers and private intelligence services. The Stasi had to hit people over the head to break people’s privacy, but now so many people give their private information away freely on social networking websites.
It is also been noted that Facebook’s format rewards users if they share private thoughts and experiences with as many people as possible (by letting them view the private lives of others), therefore brainwashing young people into accepting a surveillance culture. However, what is rarely mentioned about social networking tools like Facebook is that they can do something far more profound and dangerous to the individual user: they can help remove him from reality.
It is certainly more than a little sinister that many young people conduct a large part of their social lives online. Clearly too much electronic communication such as Facebook and MSN messenger dehumanise our lives. Satisfying human interaction involves a wide array of experiences, from long intimate conversations which unearth connections with other people, to varied group dynamics and rituals. Yet so many people these days accept weak electronic substitutes for the real thing.
I should make it clear that Facebook is probably psychologically harmless to the individual in small doses. You can share files, keep in contact with people through messages and remember past occasions by clicking through old photographs if you wish to go on a nostalgia ride. But many people are clearly addicted. Five cigarettes a day may be harmless. 40 a day is a joyless dependency. Smoking a cigarette is a real experience though; using Facebook is like smoking an electronic cigarette that gives you a nicotine kick.
Facebook is entertainment; it is not reality. It is like playing the life-simulation computer game The Sims but with your actual life, yet too many people have become so confused that they believe the game is real.
It would be naïve to think that this behaviour is simply a plague of madness. Rather living life online is a product of our culture. To illustrate this I will analyse Facebook by focusing on how different aspects of our upbringing have helped lead us to view our lives online.


Education

We went through a militaristic education system. Teachers say sit
down. Sit still. Do what I say. Listen to this boring information. Repeat what I say. If you’re a good parrot you’ll get an A. If you’re bad we’ll punish you. Humiliate you. Make you put the dunce cap on.
University uses the same techniques even though it may appear more free. University work is potty training for a job. First you do what you’re told. Then you do quite a specific task (e.g. what type of information and writing style to use etc), and then you have to repeat it (e.g. 20 essays a year). Same with a job. Certain subjects like the sciences may sometimes ask for creativity and initiative but only ever when it is called upon and within strict boundaries. And only because it may be needed in the line of work you are being trained for. Essentially, a degree is an award for conformity and obedience.
The education system therefore is designed to drain free will and initiative out of a kids brain like a sponge. This makes it perfect for creating a degenerate Facebook addict who sits and watches as their social life ticks by on screen.
It also demands that you become emotionally dependent on the approval of others. This is achieved through the use of the teacher who rewards and punishes you.
When you live in an atomised society like ours, how can you get this approval? A huge virtual database of people such as Facebook can give you the approval you crave, it is self-policing virtual unit where people are checked and scanned and given approval by others. You look good in your photos. You have a good status. You have just so many friends. A virtual sheepdog putting the sheep in their pen.
Here’s a example; if you are constantly under attack from friends with cameras, do you act spontaneously knowing that pictures of your behaviour will be uploaded online and appear on the news feed of everyone you know?


TV and entertainment

We were shaped from a young age with a very powerful hallucinogenic drug called the television. Watch a kids cartoon. There is a new scene every second, each containing a thousand colourful movements and flashes creating a dizzying, hypnotic effect. While mesmerised the child absorbs the mentality of TV; that life should always be entertaining and instantly gratifying.
A small child’s mind is a blank slate. What happens to her when left alone with this powerful narcotic all day? Her attention span will be that of a fly, and she will crave instant gratification from immediate experience. It is an unhealthy mindset; living on a diet of electronic pleasures is fast food for the mind. She will now find it hard to (exercise) bond with people because human interaction cannot always be entertaining and instantly gratifying. Facebook now fills the void. It gives her an artificial social substitute, which can be viewed while watching TV or listening to a CD at the same time; just in case she gets bored for a few seconds.
Too much entertainment can empty you of ideas. When you watch entertainment you are passive. Your imagination is not generated from within yourself: it is downloaded. Downloading a social life is therefore natural.
Nightclubs are rendered impotent by this mindset. Go to a mainstream club full of young people and you will see some dancing and a few people copping off, but primarily you will see people taking pictures of each other. They have grown up experiencing the world through television, so experiencing life through a medium is not so strange. It seems that what is happening is not real to them unless they download the experience via a machine at a later date.


Advertisements

From a young age we have been bombarded with the techniques of advertising and have assimilated them as effective ways of communication.
A Facebook profile is an advertisement. You advertise yourself as an exciting person with a million friends. You are selling yourself as a commodity.
Social networking tools then can lead to the commodification of social life. And when people are persuaded by superficial advertising techniques to buy a product, what is their relationship to that product? It is a fleeting, shallow one based on instant gratification and cheap kicks. Wave goodbye to your friends as they become a Coca-Cola can in your mind...


`In the midst of all this confusion the Facebook addict can suffer paralyzing, abstract emotional pain as they are further removed from reality. In time this will manifest itself in the individual as a psychological force field blocking them from other people. However, the explanation for it all is really quite simple.
Too much electronic communication and social networking in the context of an already alienated modern lifestyle further removes us from our true nature as social creatures. No person can be truly comfortable as a Facebook addict because deep down the dying embers of wild instincts still flicker, yearning for real human contact and adventure.