[Via... http://www.egroups.com/group/Communist-Internet ] . . ----- Original Message ----- From: John Clancy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <overflow: ;> Sent: Monday, May 21, 2001 12:54 AM Subject: [Cuba SI] Guardian:Federal EU plan Unveiled. More Power to the Peopla from: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subject: Guardian:Federal EU plan unveiled. More power to the People Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >International news / Federal EU plan unveiled by Schröder / John >Hooper in Berlin and Patrick Wintour in London >Federal EU plan unveiled by Schröder >John Hooper in Berlin and Patrick Wintour in London > >A blueprint drawn up by Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, has put forward a radical vision of a federal Europe. It envisages a superstate with its own unelected ministers, its own indirectly elected president, and a two-chamber parliament with full control over public spending. > A report in this week's edition of the news magazine Der Spiegel says that the draft envisages turning the unelected European Commission into a government with wide-ranging powers. It would be headed by a president chosen by one or both of the chambers in a remodelled European parliament. The existing legislature would become the lower house. >The council of ministers, the existing forum for national governments, would become an upper house. National governments would choose representatives to speak for them in the upper house so that national leaders such as the British prime minister and the French president would, in effect, become Euro-senators. The European parliament as a whole would have "full control" over the central government's spending. > Mr Schröder also wants a "more energetic harmonisation" of taxes across the EU -a policy that is anathema to both the main parties in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. News of the blueprint elicited an appalled response from British Eurosceptics. France and Spain have expressed deep reluctance to follow Germany down the road to a federal Europe, and French officials insisted they would not accept such a dilution of national sovereignty. >Austria's chancellor Wolfgang Schussel warned against a "European superstate". Mr Schröder's proposals are to be discussed by his party colleagues in Berlin later this month on the day the British prime minister, Tony Blair, is due to visit the German capital for a meeting of the Party of European Socialists. But the plan is likely to be given a warm reception at the commission. And it holds out to Mr Schröder the tantalising prospect of a place in history as the spiritual father of a united continent. > Mr Schröder's plan for a superstate is contained in one of five policy papers being prepared for the conference in November of his Social Democratic party (SPD). The chancellor took personal responsibility for the preparation of the paper on Europe. >The Guardian Weekly 3-5-2001, page 7 ***** from: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subject: Kevin: More power to the people Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Comment and Analysis / More power to the people / >Kevin Danaher The May Day demonstrations are not about smashing capitalism but about demanding a say in the future >More power to the people > >When it comes to rebellion on the streets, I must confess a prejudice. In a pitched battle between children armed with banners and spray paint against police and military personnel with an array of deadly weapons, I tend to side with the kids. > At recent street protests in Quebec and in the late-1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organisation, this 50-year-old was out on the streets with the young people. I was very impressed by their analysis, their courage, their creativity and their heartfelt desire to protect other species from the human onslaught. > Why would these young people be rebellious? Maybe it's due to things such as seeing the major biological systems of the planet collapsing while an oil company cowboy in the White House pulls the United States government out of the mild Kyoto Accords because it might disrupt the profits of his benefactors. > There are really two varieties of globalisation: elite globalisation (which we oppose) and grassroots globalisation (which we promote). The top-down globalisation is characterised by a constant drive to maximise profits for globe-spanning corporations. It forces countries to "open up" their national economies to large corporations, reduce social services, privatise state functions, deregulate the economy, be "efficient" and competitive, and submit everything and everyone to the rule of "market forces". Because markets move resources only in the direction of those with money, social inequality has reached grotesque levels. > The United Nations Development Programme reports that the richest 20% of the world's people account for 86% of global consumption, and the poorest 80% of the world's population struggle to survive on just 14% of total consumption spending. Tens of thousands of children die every day because resources distributed by market forces automatically bypass the poor. > But there is another kind of globalisation that centres on life values: protecting human rights and the environment. Grassroots globalisation comprises many large and growing movements: the fair trade movement, micro-enterprise lending networks, the movement for social and ecological labelling, sister cities and sister schools, citizen diplomacy, trade union solidarity across borders, worker-owned co-ops, international family farm networks, and many others. > While these constituents of grassroots globalisation lack the money and government influence possessed by the corporations, they showed at the WTO protests in Seattle that they are able to mobilise enough people to halt the corporate agenda in its tracks, at least temporarily. There is a big question confronting us as we enter the 21st century, which is: will money values dominate life values, or will the life cycle dominate the money cycle? > Let's be clear about the "free market". It is an ideological construct that does not exist in reality. All the countries that successfully industrialised did so through state intervention, with government playing an active role in directing investment, managing trade and subsidising chosen sectors of the economy. The temple of democracy has been taken over in recent decades by the transnational money-changers. Large corporations dominate national governments and the secret global government (the WTO, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, etc) that is being constructed behind the backs of citizens. > Would the policies of these global bodies be kept so secret if they were really in the public interest? Yet getting them to debate in public is like pulling teeth. >We are now experiencing "a constitutional moment". Corporate interests are writing a global constitution that elevates corporate profit- making above the rights of citizens to protect their jobs and the environment. If workers, small businesses, non-profit groups and environmentalists are not represented when the rules get written, then their interests will be subordinated to those of corporate profit- making. There are mounting symptoms. The world economy produces more food per capita than ever, yet we have more hungry people than ever. > The environmental crisis is evident in eroding topsoil, poisoned ground water, melting glaciers, receding icecaps at the poles, a depleted ozone layer, the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and unsustainable patterns of resource consumption. In turn, these crises are producing a moral crisis in which the affluent avert their eyes and pretend there is no crisis. >In the cities of rich countries,in Seattle, Quebec, London, protesters rage against an economy that turns every living thing into dead money. These protests are the beginning of a movement that puts love of life above love of money. Find details of the author's work at www. globalexchange.org >The Guardian Weekly 3-5-2001, page 12 "JC Cuba SI - Imperialism NO! Socialism or death! Patria o muerte! Venceremos! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cubasi Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
