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A Super-State Is Being Created Without Consent Of The People, Warns Polish MEP

A Super-State Is Being Created Without Consent Of The People, Warns Polish MEP

Authored by Olivier Bault via Remix News,

The public is not…

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A Super-State Is Being Created Without Consent Of The People, Warns Polish MEP

Authored by Olivier Bault via Remix News,

The public is not supposed to notice that a putsch is about to take place, that the European Union as a community of sovereign states is being abolished and a superstate is being created without any consent of the people, says Polish MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski

The European Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee adopted a resolution on Oct. 25 with a report carrying far-reaching treaty changes drafted by the so-called Verhofstadt Group, a team led by the Belgian Eurofederalist Guy Verhofstadt.

The plenary vote is planned for Nov. 22 and will formally trigger the procedure to amend the existing treaties.

Polish MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, who was a member of this Verhofstadt Group until July, explains in this exclusive interview with Remix News why this latest attempt to transform the European Union into an undemocratic superstate, which he describes as a silent putsch with communist roots, has a real chance to succeed if it is not stopped fast.

* * *

There have been elections in Poland, and we know that a new government will probably be formed by the Civic Coalition together with the Third Way and the New Left. Does this mean that Poland will now support the far-reaching changes to the EU treaties proposed by the left and center-right in the European Parliament?

I prefer to speak in the conditional because as of today, the formation of a government by the opposition is likely, but not a foregone conclusion. However, if this does happen, it is indeed true that Poland can no longer be expected to block these changes in the way the EU functions.

The Polish opposition, at the stage of parliamentary work, supported these changes, both through the votes of the representatives of their political groups in the team of co-rapporteurs of the report, which we colloquially call the Verhofstadt Group and which I left in July in protest, and with their votes in the Constitutional Affairs Committee, and also in the plenary voting.

As for the plenary votes, in the Report on Parliamentarianism, European Citizenship, and Democracy, where there was an amendment to eliminate the Member States’ veto right, the opposition voted to eliminate this right of veto.

During the vote in the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs on Oct. 25, the representatives of these Polish parties expressed their support in principle for this plan to create a superstate and reduce the role of the member states to that of German-style “Länder.”

So, it is almost certain that if these three parties form a government headed by Donald Tusk in Poland, they will support these changes.

Assuming this is what is going to happen, can these changes be blocked by smaller countries such as Hungary and Slovakia, whose new prime minister, Robert Fico, has expressed his fierce opposition to the elimination of the veto right?

We have to consider the experience with the Constitutional Treaty. There were many resisters and eventually, under pressure and blackmail, even the most resistant, Britain, agreed. This treaty was only blocked by two referendums, in the Netherlands and France. It is only then that this treaty was abandoned. However, it was eventually adopted in a truncated form and rebadged as the Lisbon Treaty. So, the history of the Constitutional Treaty proves that even the most resistant give way and yield under pressure over time.

Here, the pressure is very great, and the tools the European Commission has at its disposal are much more powerful than in the days of trying to push through the Constitutional Treaty. Back then, the Commission could not block funds, as it does today. It could not put a member state up against a wall on contrived charges concerning the so-called rule of law, for example.

The arsenal of means of extortion and blackmail is much larger today and it is actively used. France’s Marine Le Pen said Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni did not want to vote for the immigration and relocation package, believing that a naval blockade was needed, not this type of ineffective measure. However, she was threatened that a tranche of the Italian recovery funds would be blocked and she bowed to the pressure since she risked, as we know, an attack by financial markets on Italy.

Italians are indeed familiar with this from 2011. But you said you left the so-called Verhofstadt Group, i.e., the team working on the report on proposals of the European Parliament for the amendment of the treaties, in an act of protest. An act of protest against what?

Against this final formula and the lack of respect for the consensus principle. We worked on the report from July 2022 to July 2023. It was hundreds of hours of negotiations. There were six representatives of six political groups, including myself on behalf of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group. The Identity & Democracy group was not allowed in.

Why?

This is the so-called “cordon sanitaire” policy enforced by the other groups, from the center-right EPP to the far left. As for the six rapporteurs, the Conference of Presidents decided that there were to be six co-rapporteurs, i.e., the principle of consensus was to apply. This means that everyone was expected to agree on the final version.

As one of those six co-rapporteurs, I have protested various solutions, unfortunately unsuccessfully. I have proposed other solutions, such as a CJEU Subsidiarity Chamber composed of the Presidents of the National Constitutional Courts, or a red card procedure in which half of the national parliaments could stop legislation in the European Commission, etc.

This was all rejected, and the “consensus of six co-rapporteurs” principle was turned into a “consensus minus one.” In other words, the five other political groups agreed on matters between themselves, and the ECR was eventually also placed outside the cordon sanitaire.

Therefore, I slammed the door on behalf of my group.

In its draft resolution that deals precisely with these proposals for treaty changes, the European Parliament cites the so-called Conference on the Future of Europe as the source of these ideas. Doesn’t that mean that there is a democratic procedure behind these proposed changes? It was a citizen consultation after all, wasn’t it?

Absolutely not.

...

It is worth noting that in the European Parliament’s resolution, its authors refer to the Ventotene Manifesto of Altiero Spinelli, an Italian Trotskyist communist. His manifesto is cited first, with Schuman’s declaration coming in second. This clearly shows that this idea of amending the EU treaty is rooted in the communist Marxist vision for Europe, where nation-states are being abolished and where democracy is basically non-existent.

Just read what Spinelli wrote on the subject. Schuman proclaimed that his idea was not to bring countries together to create a superstate, and the idea of the Union as a superstate has its origin in the concepts Spinelli exposed in the Ventotene Manifesto.

It says that “it derives its vision and certainty of what must be done from the knowledge that it represents the deepest needs of modern society and not from any previous recognition by popular will, as yet inexistent. In this way, it issues the basic guidelines of the new order, the first social discipline directed to the unformed masses. By this dictatorship of the revolutionary party a new State will be formed, and around this State new, genuine democracy will grow.”

This is pure Bolshevism!

This future democracy, as in communism, is to be led by the dictatorship of revolutionary parties.

The Ventotene Manifesto further says that it will be a stable federal state with a European army, etc.

Let’s be clear: This project to reform the EU treaties is communist and it rejects Schuman’s Christian-democratic concept. The Spinelli Group, which co-authored the proposals, is an informal group in the European Parliament with dozens of MEPs. They claim to be federalists, but their project is actually anti-federalist.

...

Yes. And once it is adopted, there will be no more need to force the will of some member states when it can be bypassed. This is a curiosity, because nowhere in any international organization is there such a thing, that a statutory, constitutional act of an organization is adopted other than unanimously.

...

This is a kind of group of political ideologues, some of whom I would even call fanatics, who want to build a superstate on the ruins of nation-states, where a political oligarchy will rule unaccountably and escape the democratic control of citizens.

...

In short, it is the Union that will decide what are the powers and scope of sovereignty of the states, and not the opposite. Thus, sovereignty within the European Union would no longer reside in the member states but in the Union itself, and the former would be subordinated.

Incidentally, the euro currency is to become mandatory for all EU members. That is also why I am talking about the threat of the member states becoming simple “Länder”: They will be just European Union states just as there are German states.

...

So what is your forecast? Does the new treaty have enough support in the big EU countries and will it simply be imposed on the rest?

First, it will pass in the European Parliament. Roughly judging by previous votes, I predict that it should be about 330 votes “for” and 170 “against.” That is what previous votes show, such as on the complete elimination of the veto right, which is envisioned in another report voted on in the European Parliament in September.

...

That is the intention, by the way, to do it in-house, in a discreet way. The public is not supposed to notice that a putsch is about to take place, that the European Union as a community of sovereign states is being abolished and a superstate is being created without any consent of the people, and that the member states are being reduced to the role of German states.

...

The problem is that Europe has been hijacked, it has been stolen. Just as Zeus, in the form of a bull, abducted Europe, left-liberal circles have taken possession of something that was a concept with a Christian genesis, something that was founded on the principle of subsidiarity, which, by the way, is derived from the Church’s social teaching. This something is being transformed by them into a project with communist roots. The authors of the European Parliament’s draft resolution and report do not even hide this.

Read the full shocking interview here...

Tyler Durden Tue, 10/31/2023 - 03:30

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International

Beloved mall retailer files Chapter 7 bankruptcy, will liquidate

The struggling chain has given up the fight and will close hundreds of stores around the world.

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It has been a brutal period for several popular retailers. The fallout from the covid pandemic and a challenging economic environment have pushed numerous chains into bankruptcy with Tuesday Morning, Christmas Tree Shops, and Bed Bath & Beyond all moving from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation.

In all three of those cases, the companies faced clear financial pressures that led to inventory problems and vendors demanding faster, or even upfront payment. That creates a sort of inevitability.

Related: Beloved retailer finds life after bankruptcy, new famous owner

When a retailer faces financial pressure it sets off a cycle where vendors become wary of selling them items. That leads to barren shelves and no ability for the chain to sell its way out of its financial problems. 

Once that happens bankruptcy generally becomes the only option. Sometimes that means a Chapter 11 filing which gives the company a chance to negotiate with its creditors. In some cases, deals can be worked out where vendors extend longer terms or even forgive some debts, and banks offer an extension of loan terms.

In other cases, new funding can be secured which assuages vendor concerns or the company might be taken over by its vendors. Sometimes, as was the case with David's Bridal, a new owner steps in, adds new money, and makes deals with creditors in order to give the company a new lease on life.

It's rare that a retailer moves directly into Chapter 7 bankruptcy and decides to liquidate without trying to find a new source of funding.

Mall traffic has varied depending upon the type of mall.

Image source: Getty Images

The Body Shop has bad news for customers  

The Body Shop has been in a very public fight for survival. Fears began when the company closed half of its locations in the United Kingdom. That was followed by a bankruptcy-style filing in Canada and an abrupt closure of its U.S. stores on March 4.

"The Canadian subsidiary of the global beauty and cosmetics brand announced it has started restructuring proceedings by filing a Notice of Intention (NOI) to Make a Proposal pursuant to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (Canada). In the same release, the company said that, as of March 1, 2024, The Body Shop US Limited has ceased operations," Chain Store Age reported.

A message on the company's U.S. website shared a simple message that does not appear to be the entire story.

"We're currently undergoing planned maintenance, but don't worry we're due to be back online soon."

That same message is still on the company's website, but a new filing makes it clear that the site is not down for maintenance, it's down for good.

The Body Shop files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy

While the future appeared bleak for The Body Shop, fans of the brand held out hope that a savior would step in. That's not going to be the case. 

The Body Shop filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the United States.

"The US arm of the ethical cosmetics group has ceased trading at its 50 outlets. On Saturday (March 9), it filed for Chapter 7 insolvency, under which assets are sold off to clear debts, putting about 400 jobs at risk including those in a distribution center that still holds millions of dollars worth of stock," The Guardian reported.

After its closure in the United States, the survival of the brand remains very much in doubt. About half of the chain's stores in the United Kingdom remain open along with its Australian stores. 

The future of those stores remains very much in doubt and the chain has shared that it needs new funding in order for them to continue operating.

The Body Shop did not respond to a request for comment from TheStreet.   

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Government

Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The headlines coming out of the Super…

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Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The headlines coming out of the Super Tuesday primaries have got it right. Barring cataclysmic changes, Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be the Republican and Democratic nominees for president in 2024.

(Left) President Joe Biden delivers remarks on canceling student debt at Culver City Julian Dixon Library in Culver City, Calif., on Feb. 21, 2024. (Right) Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump stands on stage during a campaign event at Big League Dreams Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nev., on Jan. 27, 2024. (Mario Tama/Getty Images; David Becker/Getty Images)

With Nikki Haley’s withdrawal, there will be no more significantly contested primaries or caucuses—the earliest both parties’ races have been over since something like the current primary-dominated system was put in place in 1972.

The primary results have spotlighted some of both nominees’ weaknesses.

Donald Trump lost high-income, high-educated constituencies, including the entire metro area—aka the Swamp. Many but by no means all Haley votes there were cast by Biden Democrats. Mr. Trump can’t afford to lose too many of the others in target states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Majorities and large minorities of voters in overwhelmingly Latino counties in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley and some in Houston voted against Joe Biden, and even more against Senate nominee Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas).

Returns from Hispanic precincts in New Hampshire and Massachusetts show the same thing. Mr. Biden can’t afford to lose too many Latino votes in target states like Arizona and Georgia.

When Mr. Trump rode down that escalator in 2015, commentators assumed he’d repel Latinos. Instead, Latino voters nationally, and especially the closest eyewitnesses of Biden’s open-border policy, have been trending heavily Republican.

High-income liberal Democrats may sport lawn signs proclaiming, “In this house, we believe ... no human is illegal.” The logical consequence of that belief is an open border. But modest-income folks in border counties know that flows of illegal immigrants result in disorder, disease, and crime.

There is plenty of impatience with increased disorder in election returns below the presidential level. Consider Los Angeles County, America’s largest county, with nearly 10 million people, more people than 40 of the 50 states. It voted 71 percent for Mr. Biden in 2020.

Current returns show county District Attorney George Gascon winning only 21 percent of the vote in the nonpartisan primary. He’ll apparently face Republican Nathan Hochman, a critic of his liberal policies, in November.

Gascon, elected after the May 2020 death of counterfeit-passing suspect George Floyd in Minneapolis, is one of many county prosecutors supported by billionaire George Soros. His policies include not charging juveniles as adults, not seeking higher penalties for gang membership or use of firearms, and bringing fewer misdemeanor cases.

The predictable result has been increased car thefts, burglaries, and personal robberies. Some 120 assistant district attorneys have left the office, and there’s a backlog of 10,000 unprosecuted cases.

More than a dozen other Soros-backed and similarly liberal prosecutors have faced strong opposition or have left office.

St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner resigned last May amid lawsuits seeking her removal, Milwaukee’s John Chisholm retired in January, and Baltimore’s Marilyn Mosby was defeated in July 2022 and convicted of perjury in September 2023. Last November, Loudoun County, Virginia, voters (62 percent Biden) ousted liberal Buta Biberaj, who declined to prosecute a transgender student for assault, and in June 2022 voters in San Francisco (85 percent Biden) recalled famed radical Chesa Boudin.

Similarly, this Tuesday, voters in San Francisco passed ballot measures strengthening police powers and requiring treatment of drug-addicted welfare recipients.

In retrospect, it appears the Floyd video, appearing after three months of COVID-19 confinement, sparked a frenzied, even crazed reaction, especially among the highly educated and articulate. One fatal incident was seen as proof that America’s “systemic racism” was worse than ever and that police forces should be defunded and perhaps abolished.

2020 was “the year America went crazy,” I wrote in January 2021, a year in which police funding was actually cut by Democrats in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Denver. A year in which young New York Times (NYT) staffers claimed they were endangered by the publication of Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-Ark.) opinion article advocating calling in military forces if necessary to stop rioting, as had been done in Detroit in 1967 and Los Angeles in 1992. A craven NYT publisher even fired the editorial page editor for running the article.

Evidence of visible and tangible discontent with increasing violence and its consequences—barren and locked shelves in Manhattan chain drugstores, skyrocketing carjackings in Washington, D.C.—is as unmistakable in polls and election results as it is in daily life in large metropolitan areas. Maybe 2024 will turn out to be the year even liberal America stopped acting crazy.

Chaos and disorder work against incumbents, as they did in 1968 when Democrats saw their party’s popular vote fall from 61 percent to 43 percent.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 23:20

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Government

Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The…

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Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reviewed no data when deciding in 2023 to keep its COVID-19 vaccine mandate in place.

Doses of a COVID-19 vaccine in Washington in a file image. (Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

VA Secretary Denis McDonough said on May 1, 2023, that the end of many other federal mandates “will not impact current policies at the Department of Veterans Affairs.”

He said the mandate was remaining for VA health care personnel “to ensure the safety of veterans and our colleagues.”

Mr. McDonough did not cite any studies or other data. A VA spokesperson declined to provide any data that was reviewed when deciding not to rescind the mandate. The Epoch Times submitted a Freedom of Information Act for “all documents outlining which data was relied upon when establishing the mandate when deciding to keep the mandate in place.”

The agency searched for such data and did not find any.

The VA does not even attempt to justify its policies with science, because it can’t,” Leslie Manookian, president and founder of the Health Freedom Defense Fund, told The Epoch Times.

“The VA just trusts that the process and cost of challenging its unfounded policies is so onerous, most people are dissuaded from even trying,” she added.

The VA’s mandate remains in place to this day.

The VA’s website claims that vaccines “help protect you from getting severe illness” and “offer good protection against most COVID-19 variants,” pointing in part to observational data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that estimate the vaccines provide poor protection against symptomatic infection and transient shielding against hospitalization.

There have also been increasing concerns among outside scientists about confirmed side effects like heart inflammation—the VA hid a safety signal it detected for the inflammation—and possible side effects such as tinnitus, which shift the benefit-risk calculus.

President Joe Biden imposed a slate of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in 2021. The VA was the first federal agency to implement a mandate.

President Biden rescinded the mandates in May 2023, citing a drop in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. His administration maintains the choice to require vaccines was the right one and saved lives.

“Our administration’s vaccination requirements helped ensure the safety of workers in critical workforces including those in the healthcare and education sectors, protecting themselves and the populations they serve, and strengthening their ability to provide services without disruptions to operations,” the White House said.

Some experts said requiring vaccination meant many younger people were forced to get a vaccine despite the risks potentially outweighing the benefits, leaving fewer doses for older adults.

By mandating the vaccines to younger people and those with natural immunity from having had COVID, older people in the U.S. and other countries did not have access to them, and many people might have died because of that,” Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine on leave from Harvard Medical School, told The Epoch Times previously.

The VA was one of just a handful of agencies to keep its mandate in place following the removal of many federal mandates.

“At this time, the vaccine requirement will remain in effect for VA health care personnel, including VA psychologists, pharmacists, social workers, nursing assistants, physical therapists, respiratory therapists, peer specialists, medical support assistants, engineers, housekeepers, and other clinical, administrative, and infrastructure support employees,” Mr. McDonough wrote to VA employees at the time.

This also includes VA volunteers and contractors. Effectively, this means that any Veterans Health Administration (VHA) employee, volunteer, or contractor who works in VHA facilities, visits VHA facilities, or provides direct care to those we serve will still be subject to the vaccine requirement at this time,” he said. “We continue to monitor and discuss this requirement, and we will provide more information about the vaccination requirements for VA health care employees soon. As always, we will process requests for vaccination exceptions in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and policies.”

The version of the shots cleared in the fall of 2022, and available through the fall of 2023, did not have any clinical trial data supporting them.

A new version was approved in the fall of 2023 because there were indications that the shots not only offered temporary protection but also that the level of protection was lower than what was observed during earlier stages of the pandemic.

Ms. Manookian, whose group has challenged several of the federal mandates, said that the mandate “illustrates the dangers of the administrative state and how these federal agencies have become a law unto themselves.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 22:10

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