Open letter to Philip Gordon, US Assistant Secretary for European Affairs

Dear Mr Gordon,

I read with interest the following comment you made on behalf of the Government of the United States of America, in your capacity as US Assistant Secretary for European Affairs, regarding the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union:

We have a growing relationship with the EU as an institution, which has an increasing voice in the world, and we want to see a strong British voice in that EU. That is in America’s interests. We welcome an outward-looking EU with Britain in it.

This comes as no surprise as it reflects the thinking of other senior members of the Obama administration, who have previously opined that the United Kingdom should remain a member of the EU.

The President of the United States is considered by many to be the leader of the free world, and the United States itself considered to be a beacon of democracy.  So it is profoundly disappointing to see the United States administration endorsing and encouraging something that is fundamentally undemocratic.  I would like to ask you the following questions.

• Would it be acceptable to you and your fellow United States citizens that over 70% of the laws and regulations they were forced to comply with across all 50 states were created by a supranational government comprising layers of complex political and judicial structures, mostly unelected and unaccountable, and made up of delegates from not only the US, but Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela and Peru?

• Would it be acceptable to you, your fellow United States citizens and members of the Senate and House of Representatives that they were routinely handed diktats from the various bodies that make up the supranational government and were bound by law to implement the directives or be fined or dragged into a supranational court operating an alien form of judicial code and process?  Further, that Congress was denied the ability to draft, and the President sign into law, other legislation of national interest whenever the supranational decided it was not appropriate?

• Would it be acceptable to you, your fellow United States citizens and the Justices of the Supreme Court that decisions made by the bench, the highest court in your land, could be appealed to a supranational court overseas with the hearing presided over by foreign judges and if overruled the Supreme Court would have to accept that as a binding ruling?

If these scenarios do not sound very democratic or judicious to you and your fellow Americans it is because they are not.  Intentionally and by design.  But this is the reality of the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union and its associated bodies and institutions.  UK membership of the EU has entailed a substantial loss of power from our democratically elected Parliament as it has been quietly and steadily transferred to unelected and unaccountable bodies abroad – all done without the people of the UK being asked to give their consent for it to happen.

While it may be in the geopolitical interest of the Government of the United States for the United Kingdom to remain a member of the European Union, opinion polls show this anti-democratic situation is opposed by a majority of British citizens.  Membership of the EU dilutes the voice of the United Kingdom.  Seats on various world bodies held by the UK have been given up so the EU can supposedly represent the competing and disparate interests of 27 countries in a wholly unsatisfactory fudge that frequently fails to serve British interests.

I am sure you will recognise the obvious contradiction in the position of the United States, on one hand calling for Syria’s regime to heed the wishes of the Syrian people, while on the other calling for the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to maintain membership of the EU, despite the wishes of the British people.  I am sure you will also recognise the obvious contradiction of the United States urging countries around the world to embrace democracy, while urging the United Kingdom to maintain its place in political and judicial structures that replace representative democracy with control by unelected and unaccountable aliens who are drawn from a pool of self-selecting career politicians and civil servants.

Would such a situation be an acceptable settlement in the United States?  I think we both know the answer to that is categorically ‘no’.

No one who believes in democracy – people power – would endorse and encourage a continuation of this anti-democratic situation for the United Kingdom.  That is what this issue is about.  So, Mr Gordon, please do not presume to meddle in our affairs and wish on us that which you would aggressively oppose for yourself.

Yours sincerely,

Autonomous Mind

Happy Thanksgiving 2012

Wishing all my American friends and readers around the world a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Candy Crowley: Romney was right, just picked the wrong word

The moderator in the debate between Obama and Romney stepped in to ‘correct’ Romney as the pair clashed over what Obama said (referencing the assault on the embassy as a terrorist act, or not) the day following the murder of the US Ambassador to Libya in Benghazi.  Now outside the heat of the debate and having done her pro-Obama work, the reality emerges.

If Crowley had been unbiased and impartial, not that one expects that in the US media which leans so far to the Democrat party it’s a surprise it’s not toppled over, one wonders if Crowley’s injection would have been rather different.  Elsewhere someone who has undertaken their own fact check of Obama’s speech that day offers this assessment:

As for the actual Rose Garden speech by Barack Obama the day after the Benghazi Massacre, the one and only use of the word terror comes toward the end  – the exact phrase being “no acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation.”  The president was unclear as to whether or not he was referencing the specific coordinated terrorist attack in Benghazi, or acts of terror in general.  This confusion is furthered by the fact Obama referenced that anti-Islam video in this same speech and placed its reference toward the beginning, further adding to its significance as the primary cause of the attack.

Possibly this small but significant part of the debate is going to get a lot of focus in the hours and days ahead.  It will be interesting to see if Romney plays this up as the actual quote is spread far and wide.  Fraser Nelson is already helping that along  http://specc.ie/QpwjkK.

Happy 4th

To our American friends everywhere, Happy 4th!

Happy Thanksgiving 2011

Wishing all my American readers around the world a very Happy Thanksgiving!

H.R. 2594

(With thanks to Alfred for his tip on the Tips/Stories page)

A seemingly innocuous title maybe, but one that conceals a course of action that could signal the start of a trade war between the EU and the United States, at a time when Brussels is firefighting sovereign debt crises and staring down the barrel of the Euro disintegrating.

In the US House of Representatives, House Resolution 2594 was introduced in July this year.  It read:

To prohibit operators of civil aircraft of the United States from participating in the European Union’s emissions trading scheme, and for other purposes.

In other words, the US Government is making it illegal for American airline operators to pay the EU’s tax on aircraft carbon emissions.  The full details of the Bill are shown below:

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In a rare show of bi-partisan cooperation, the Republicans and Democrats on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee passed the Bill unanimously.  It now goes before the Senate and if it passes there all that stands between it being rejected or becoming law is the signature of President Obama.  Among the key paragraphs of the Bill are these two notable assertions used as justification for the US position:

(3) The European Union’s extraterritorial action is inconsistent with long-established international law and practice, including the Chicago Convention of 1944 and the Air Transport Agreement between the United States and the European Union and its member states, and directly infringes on the sovereignty of the United States.

(6) There is no assurance that ETS revenues will be used for aviation environmental purposes by the European Union member states that will collect them.

It is not just the US lining up against the EU on this matter.  In the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) no less than 26 countries are opposed to the EU’s arbitrary measure.

After years of acting with impunity against the interests of the citizens of the member states, the EU now finds itself facing proper concerted opposition to its behaviour.  This could become part of a snowball effect as Brussels comes under attack from multiple directions on multiple issues and add to a sense of crisis across the political class within the bloc.  We are now living in what the Chinese call ‘interesting times’.

Reality of sea ice is starting to bite

One problem with ‘global warming’ that scientists and journalists seem to gloss over is that it doesn’t seem to be, well, global. Some areas have exhibited more warming than others.

The Arctic is one area that gets a lot of focus.  Each summer the media makes a big deal of the extent of Arctic sea ice melt during the warmest months of the year, focusing on navigation passages and often proclaiming that before long the summer will see all the Arctic ice melt away. The BBC never misses an opportunity to relay the story, even if it is barely mentioned elsewhere, and rolled out the latest iteration of it last week.

However there seems to be a lack of coverage about the increasing extent of sea ice in the winter.  With the non stop global warming narrative burned onto the subsconscious of decision makers, it the therefore of little surprise that there has been barely any investment in new maritime icebreaking capability.

Always ahead of the game, EU Referendum pointed to this problem in March this year. Richard North reported the former Prime Minister of Estonia Tiit Vähi arguing that the country should urgently order a new icebreaker, “Instead of spending money on buying icebreaking services.”  The reason? The country’s two existing icebreakers cannot cope with the “difficult ice conditions” in the Gulf of Finland.  Elsewhere, North was an almost solitary voice in the western blogosphere as he reported on shipping trapped in the Sea of Okhotsk by a huge volume of thick sea ice and the subsequent challenging rescue effort.

So it is that a reader used AM’s Tips/Stories link to draw our attention to a little reported story about the way increasing sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere has resulted in Sweden withholding an icebreaker from US use in Antarctica.   After increasingly bitter winters that have resulted in more iced over navigation passages, the Swedish government wrote to US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, to announce that the icebreaker Oden (pictured) will be kept at home and not be made available to support the work of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) in Antarctica, for the first time since 2006.

Update: This morning, AM contacted the press office of Sweden’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Carl Bildt, and requested a copy of the letter sent to Hilary Clinton.  In less than one working day the press office has located it and forwarded it to me (below). Compare that level of service to the often grudging response we in this country are subjected to when submitting Freedom of Information requests…

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It validates the story published in the journal Science two weeks ago which explained:

Last month, the Swedish government abruptly ended an ongoing agreement with the U.S. National Science Foundation that allowed NSF to lease Oden, the pride of the Swedish icebreaking fleet and also the world’s most capable polar-class research vessel. NSF has used the ship each winter since 2006–07 to clear a path through the sea ice to resupply McMurdo Station, the largest scientific outpost in Antarctica and the hub for U.S. activities on the continent. The Swedish government decided that the Oden needed to stay at home this coming winter after two harsh winters disrupted shipping lanes in the region.

However, the decision was not abrupt. The move had been mooted for months and such was the concern among the Americans, Earth and Space Research (ESR) wrote to the Swedes in early May in a bid to influence them not to withdraw Oden:

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And the Subcommittee on Polar Issues (see page 12 of the Minutes) of the National Science Foundation’s Committee on Programs and Plans (CPP) was also aware in May that Oden had not been secured for use.   The ESR letter above highlights the importance of Oden and underscored the lack of icebreaking capability that could be drawn upon to cut a passage for supply vessels to the US Antarctic Program’s McMurdo Station on Ross Island.

In July the Swedes confirmed Oden would be needed at home and therefore not be available for use in the Antarctic.  The increasingly difficult ice conditions have affected commercial shipping around Sweden and the Baltic nations and the Swedes plan to keep their sea lanes more open this year using their premier icebreaker.  Following the confirmation the NSF laid bare the serious implications of the icebreaker not being available to its programme in an internal letter to colleagues engaged in Polar research:

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But it seems the National Science Foundation only has itself to blame for the position it found itself in, for the NSF is responsible for managing the U.S. icebreaking fleet.  Under NSF management the US icebreaking fleet has been ‘emasculated’.  The American fleet of icebreakers numbers three – for now. It boasted two of the most powerful non-nuclear icebreakers on the seas, Polar Sea and Polar Star, but that changed some years ago.  Polar Sea  is to be decommissioned next month and Polar Star has been undergoing a re-fit since 2006, but there is speculation it might never to return to service. The third, Healy is not designed for heavy icebreaking of the nature required in Antarctica.

This begs the question, why did the NSF not properly maintain the US icebreaking fleet?  Could it be the faith in its own belief that global warming is reducing ice cover and therefore spending money on icebreakers would be a waste?  No matter, the NSF was forced into an embarrassing and desperate search for a suitable icebreaking replacement.

Having already said it would need to find and engage a suitable replacement by mid-August, or else implement contingency plans that would curtail activities in Antarctica, it seems the NSF experienced a near-run thing.  Indeed, it was only last week they announced they had agreed a contract for a smaller and less capable icebreaker, the Vladimir Ignatyuk (pictured):

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The press release from the NSF, when explaining this replacement Russian vessel had been drafted in because Oden would not be available, avoided mentioning the reason for the Swedish decision.  You can see how the two icebreakers measure up on Wikipedia – Oden / Vladimir Ignatyuk.

The story may seem trivial in isolation.  But the fact that no newspaper appears to have picked it up so far tells its own story.  Maybe it is because there is a media agenda to avoid covering stories that could lead to people questioning commonly made assertions about global warming.  Which is why the news and the more important issues underpinning it exist behind paywalls, in house journals and little read snippets from entities such as the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office…

In Estonia and Sweden at least reality is starting to bite. How long before it takes hold elsewhere?

WikiLeaks lays bare the games of the political class

The drip feed of revelations from US diplomatic cables being published on WikiLeaks and via several selected media outlets will make interesting reading. Already the cables have shattered the default thinking of some people.

The supposedly bloodthirsty Israelis have shown concern about collateral damage if Iran’s nuclear facilities are not attacked before the end of this year. A number of Arab states have been pressing the US to deal with the threat of their fellow Muslim nation, Iran. David Cameron may have emulated Obama’s ‘change’ meme during the election campaign, but the Americans are not impressed by him. And there is much more besides. It will take time to distil much of the information so titbits will take days to emerge.

While much is being made about the assertion that publication would place at risk “the lives of countless innocent individuals … ongoing military operations … and cooperation between countries” it is becoming clear (unsurprisingly) that the main driver of protests about the publication of these cables is a desire to avoid embarrassment about the often inane games played by the political class. Let the contempt and oppobrium be heaped upon them.

 

Polanski escapes justice for sex with 13-yr-old

The film director, Roman Polanski, has been freed from house arrest by Switzerland after an extradition request by the United States was turned down.  The Swiss seem to be suggesting there was some kind of fault in the US request.  Polanski can consider himself unjustly fortunate for not suffering the consequences for effectively raping a child. 

Just think, if Polanksi had been arrested in the United Kingdom his extradition would have been a certainty.  Just ask the NatWest Three, Gary Mulgrew, David Bermingham and Giles Darby, who were carted of to the US without so much as a prima facie case being presented to a UK judge.  In contrast, Polanski had been found guilty and fled the day before sentencing.

When people say there is no justice in this world they might just have a point.

Our former friends the Americans

Writing on his Telegraph blog today, Alex Singleton had this to say:

The special relationship is over. We gave America years of unwavering support after September 11. And now we see how Barack Obama’s administration repays us.

First, Obama declared that America was “neutral” over the sovereignty of the Falklands, ignoring the clear wishes of the islands’ population. And, second, his Assistant Secretary of State, Philip Crowley, snubbed Britain by failing to use their proper name and instead calling them the “Malvinas”.

I don’t know where Obama learned about diplomacy, but his stinks. I’m normally pro-American, but Mr Obama’s seeming support for Argentinian aggressors, who have no legitimate claim over the Falklands, is gratuitously offensive. So from today, I’m boycotting America as a tourist destination. This summer, I’ll be going to France, not California.

Let me be clear: I’m not normally in favour of boycotts, and I love the American people.  I holiday in their country regularly, and hate the tedious snobby sneers against the United States. But the American people chose to elect an idiot who seems hell bent on insulting their allies, and something must be done to stop Obama’s reckless foreign policy, before he does the dirty on his allies on every issue.

If our American friends want to stop Obama shredding the respect the rest of the planet has towards America, they need to stop Obama’s destructive policies – and fast.

With the exception of believing in the ‘special relationship’ and holidaying in France, ditto.  The election of Barack Obama as President was the most astonishing example of gesture politics in history. His election was the end in itself and the hysteria and unquestioning fealty evident among many voters and across the media deserves all the ridicule that can be mustered.  Rarely has so much power been secured by someone who campaigned not on policy, but on the meaningless and undefined idea of ‘change’.  What that change actually means is now becoming clear around the world and as Obama’s administration shows its banal vacuousness his popularity and credibility is rightly going into freefall.