The UK’s EU Referendum: We the People have chosen …

We the people have chosen; and we have chosen to leave the EU! It is a double victory for democracy, because the British people have not only exercised their democratic rights to determine how they are governed, but have also chosen to reject the European Commission (EC) and its undemocratic and technocratic form of government.

Now the job of creating a different future begins. Our free debate has led to a democratic result. Now is the time for unity and people should be wary about those who will seek to exploit this historic decision for their own ends. Evidently this is already happening which is a timely reminder how easy it is for people to be led astray – not that anyone would admit to being led astray.

And if anyone was hoping that we might see an end to the name calling, the scaremongering, and the end of world predictions, their hopes will be dashed, for already there are people saying all sorts of strange things about what might happen and what they are going to do, which suggests that the concept of democracy is not fully understood and is something that some people are willing to respect only if it delivers the result that they want. They are only ensuring that we the people will not be asked again to decide upon important issues, which just plays into the hands of elites and powerful vested interests.

People should stop being so negative. Unplug yourself from Facebook and calm down. Be constructive. Once the dust has settled and people have had time for more considered reflection, the matter will seem very different.

People who are bitter and negative and want to be doomsayers will not be the ones who will be shaping our new future because the only people who will listen to the doomsayers will be their fellow doomsayers and they will just become an isolated and embittered minority. No-one wants to listen to people using bad language and to insults directed at people who did what they thought best for their country. Show some respect. It you want to participate, use your intellect and develop your arguments and learn to accept that in a democracy not everyone can get their own way. Those who have won the argument on this occasion are aware that there are people who do not agree with the majority decision, but, the reality is that the majority decision is the way we have to go. Not to follow the wishes of the majority will just damage democracy and undermine further the credibility of our system of elected representation. Remember that the alternative to democracy is a dictatorship, an authoritarian style of government, where you will not be allowed to write what you want to write in Facebook.

Our future will be what we decide it will be and not what negative thinking doomsayers would like it to be just to prove that they are right. Let us now, therefore, make a success of the direction in which the country has to go.

We will make some more observations, when the time is right. This is not the right time, so we end by remembering the forgotten youth of Greece whose futures have been destroyed by people, far away, pursuing megalomaniac schemes; people far removed from the consequences of their actions, who in ‘shining towers’ live in the bubble world that is the Emperor’s Court (EC). When will someone tell the emperor that he is wearing no clothes?

The UK’s EU Referendum: A choice between democracy and technocracy

All the issues of relevance that have been discussed over the past few weeks are largely views on what might happen if the UK decides to break free from the EU. This is the reality of this type of debate for none of us know the future, although the past seems to suggest what the future may be, especially as we are discussing Europe!

So we are left in a position choosing between what looks like the certainty of the status quo, and the uncertainty inherent in leaving. To stay or to go is probably the hardest question than any electorate in the UK has ever been asked to vote upon, made so by the fact that it is a single issue, unlike in a General Election when we vote on just about everything. It is however a single issue that will shape our country for decades to come, and will, potentially, involve our participation in events that British people will not want to be part of – the future may be more certain than people realise given that we are discussing here – Europeans.

I want now to give people an insider’s view, having been involved with Brussels for 30 years. But first a quote:

“In earlier times, anyone who thought of universal history, because of the narrowness of his horizons, constructed a unity at the expense of restriction; amongst ourselves, for instance, he restricted himself to West, in China to the Central Empire. That which lay beyond had no part in it and was regarded as a life of barbarians, primitive peoples, which were certainly an object of ethnological interest, but not of history. Unity consisted in the presupposition of the tendency to cause all the still unknown peoples of the earth to participate, stage by stage, in one – namely one’s own – culture, to bring them into one’s own sphere of order.”

These are the words of the German philosopher Karl Jaspers (in his book The Origin and Goal of History), writing in the aftermath of the National Socialists, the Second World War, and the Holocaust. These words very accurately describe how the European Commission thinks and operates; this organisation is very European in the most negative sense of the meaning of such a phrase.

I first became involved with Brussels, namely the European Commission (EC), in 1986. I did so because I knew that the Commission were not pursuing the right research agenda in relation to manufacturing industry. It is a long story, but now here in 2016, 30 years on, the same issues are still there, which is one of the reasons why I am now starting to break my connections, and to withdraw from all involvement with the EC. In the process I have come to call these people Prometheus and sometimes also Narcissus, along with those that gather around the EC (the Emperor’s Court). Everyday they just reinvent themselves in the same form they were the day before, but have so fallen in love with themselves, they are unable to see this.

As for the other reasons for my withdrawal:

They say that power corrupts, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely – the EC is the case study that demonstrates the first to be true, and may, if we do not do something about this monster, prove also that the second part is also correct. What it will take to prove the latter is the creation and the alignment of the sort of social, political and economic conditions that lead people to look for simplistic ideologically based solutions – the type of conditions that the modern world is now busy bringing about. This simplistic ideologically based thinking is already taking shape in the EC and in the wider EU.

The problems with the EC started at its inception back in the 1950s because it was created around a 19th century bureaucratic model: thus the perception of the EC as a bureaucracy. But the problem with the EC is worse than this, for it was also founded on elitism and dirigisme. Here in 2016 the EC is as bureaucratic, as elitist and as dirigistic as on the day it was born.

The EC is a technocratic organisation. It believes that it can intervene in matters complex, in business, in economy, in research, and so forth, and worse, that it actually knows what those interventions should be, hence they largely work top-down, rather than bottom-up, and most often fail, as is demonstrated by the fact that Europe has the lowest economic growth rate of any continent.

The EC has vast powers delegated to it by the various treaties and the money to pursue its technocratic fantasies. It has also become the target of the priestly caste of technocrats called scientists, technologist and engineers, who are now working behind the scenes to gain power and influence. This is in addition to powerful corporations who are increasingly, as the European economy continues to weaken, exerting their influence. The two – science and business – are closely allied with each other, as science is now primarily perceived as an activity to be pursued for economic reasons (which is also why we are now seeing a ethical meltdown in the world of science, technology and engineering). Hence the appeal to the EC, which has been desperately trying, and failing, for 30 years to deal with the economic decline of Europe. The EC is unable to understand that it is part of the problem.

The scientific technocrats are advocating a form of reason that is not grounded in humanity, common sense, instincts, and emotions – there is no room for the subjective and for soft knowledge. Richard Dawkins is one of their high priests, but there are others, who all hold in contempt anything that is not grounded in the scientific method and quantification. They are seeking what I have come to call Scientific Government and in the EC they find a willing partner in this madness. It is a marriage made in Hell. It is also a relationship founded on the elitism of Ancient Greece – free people think, slaves work.

Some years ago, under the reign of the previous President, the man concerned decided to take unto himself a person to be his Chief Scientific Advisor. The appointment was done in secret and there were no independent vetting processes. The advice delivered was given in secret and never subjected to public or parliamentary scrutiny, or that of the wider scientific community. The appointee used (abused) her position to advocate that science was so important that scientists needed to have a seat in government. Many in the world of science support her views. All of them have conflicts of interest and they all, along with their institutions, stand to gain financially from this. The conflicts of interest of the Chief Scientific Advisor were never independently established, nor were any disciplinary actions taken against her, for what in a democratic setting would have been seen as an abuse of a public appointment.

She was condemned by a number of MEPs. She herself, who in her post was just a mere employee of the EC, felt that it was within her power and her right to take these elected representatives to tasks for their views, and she used these people to further the case for her argument which reduces to this statement: in our system of government, politicians are told what to do and how to do it, and any improvement made to the instructions given to them is fatal to success, and if they deviate from what we instruct them to do, they must tell the people that they are doing so. Elsewhere one can also find people saying that policy decisions of a scientific or technical nature, e.g. those relating to the use of GM crops, should be taken out of the hands of politicians! Juncker it seems was not prepared to inherit this troublesome high priestess and she was discarded and not replaced. Instead, an internal person, who is also caught-up in the idea of Scientific Government, was appointed as an innovation advisor. This is just a foretaste of the totalitarianism that could come about in Brussels, as the EU’s economic circumstances deteriorate further.

We are dealing here with scientists and technologists who have become ideologues. They have taken a valuable means of knowing the world (science) and turned it into a perverse ideology that consumes the mind, just as the Soviets did with the works of Karl Marx, right-wing free market extremists have done with the works of Adam Smith, some Christians have done with the Bible, and some Muslims are now doing with the Holy Qur’an. These are, to use Hayek’s words, the “totalitarians in our midst” and this is a one hell of an ideological conflict that you are in the process of creating.

Some may have read Hayek’s book The Road to Serfdom. The European Commission has already built The Road to Serfdom, and it uses the money that it takes from us, via our National Governments, to keep the serfs in line. It has created a dependency culture, whereby it decides what it will do, and then it seeks experts, all of whom will benefit from the Commission’s proposals, to support these plans. Then it often uses these experts to confirm that the money has been well spent. Dissenters are not tolerated and are sent into exile – i.e. they are dismissed as suffering from some deficit and never invited back. ICT-ART CONNECT – the STARTS Platform – is a prime example of this form of technocratic corruption, and my forth coming book (STARTS – Science, Technology and the Arts: The Artistic Voices that DG CONNECT Silenced) explores this.

The European Parliament is aware of these problems but is largely powerless to do anything about it. People like Juncker are themselves elitist and dirigistic, so will do nothing to put an end to this madness.

What people do not understand is that the European Commission is, in effect, an unelected government, not a civil service. We have not shared sovereignty, but instead transferred sovereign power to a body over which there is no democratic control. When they fail, as they do, we cannot evict them from office, nor is anyone punished for this failure – no-one resigns in disgrace, no departments are exposed for wasting public money, and no officials are disciplined. The failures are covered-up so that you, the people, never learn about what goes on behind closed doors, in Brussels, at your expense. They, the EC, act with impunity.

As a government, the EC has diplomatic representations all around the globe. The President of the European Commission is treated as a Head of State. The Treaty of Lisbon gave the EC power over foreign policy and the European Commission now has a foreign policy. It is one that is best described as cultural colonialism. So we have an unelected government preaching and lecturing to the world about European values, and seeking in an imperial way to project these values on to the non-European world and to enforce these values through trade and cooperation agreements. So why are you thinking that the China is more likely to prioritise a trade agreement with the EU over one with an independent UK that is not bound by the EU’s colonial dogma?

And the EC seems to be genuinely surprised about the backlash that has come in the form of the non-European world (the barbarians in need of European civilisation) contesting this colonial EU foreign policy, and taking their own steps to project their values and beliefs onto the world. The seeds of conflict are being sown!

It can be said that in this very traditional European policy there is no recognition of the genuinely different and legitimate interests of other societies. This is the fate that awaits Turkey and all from outside Europe who want to join the EU – they will have to become European and this will probably create a violent response against Europe, which will just reconfirm the European view that those in the non-European world are barbarians. Hints of this have already been seen in the aftermath of the Paris and Brussels attacks. People in Belgium actually referred to the Brussels’ terrorist as barbarians. Two days after the Brussels bombs, in The Hague, a man was sentence to 41 years in prison for war crimes and his part in the genocide of 8000 Muslim men in the Srebrenica enclave. No one called Radovan Karadzic a barbarian – he was one of us so he is a war criminal.

Let us be clear – when you start calling people barbarians, you separate, classify and begin to dehumanise them. And in doing so you are preparing people for the eventual outcome, which you will reason your way towards, because the sort of reason that is now becoming dominant in the Europeanised world is one that is devoid of any humanity, compassion and common sense. This is a path that only has one destination – it is a very European destination and you know what it is!

Efforts have been made to reform the EC, but the monster is very adept at finding ways around these reforms. The European Parliament and the Member State politicians seem to be powerless against the EC and its power grows with every new treaty that is signed.

The EC already has a currency, which is in effect the German Deutsche Mark, which is partly why the EU is now dominated by one nation – the Germans. The EC will one day have a fiscal policy under its control. It will one day have a police force under its control. It already has the beginnings of such in the form of its internal security department which investigates leaks of confidential information from EC officials. There also exists a fraud investigation body. It will one day have an army under its control as well. By that time, the National Governments will have been reduced to something similar to what in the UK we call Local Authorities, and will not have the power to resist the final step, which will be a European State, with an unelected government. Once a government with a police force and an army comes into being, that is not subject to democratic control and accountability, and which lacks a democratic ethos, it has the means to do what it wants to do – you cannot resist such a government! What will have been created is a totalitarian system that practices state control of society and economy. It will be a Union of Subservient State Republics run by an elite class of technocrats. Then the means of silencing their opponents will no longer be limited to exile.

Back in the early nineties, there was idealism in Brussels. People talked about integration, working together, about a social Europe. There was also a rejection of the idea of a Europe based upon a melting-pot where many cultures are mixed into one: people spoke about strength in diversity and they celebrated the vast cultural differences across the Member State nations. No-one has any idealist visions any more. Social Europe is dead. The idea of diversity has been abandon in favour of the meting-pot notion of a single culture. Everything now is about money, about the economy. Many people (including academics and artists) go to Brussels to gain power, influence, and to get their hands on public money, and will resort to disingenuous means to do so. The EU now pursues a neo-liberal agenda, and has abandoned the people of Europe to the power of money, just as the US government has done with its people.

I get the feeling that the people of Europe are sleepwalking once more into yet another one of those very European nightmares.

It may be that the only hope left is that China and India will find a way to balance economy and science with humanity and nature and that they will be the ones providing the future model for civilisation. I have come to the conclusion that the days of the West are drawing to an end, and that the future lies in convincing the Chinese and the Indians to walk a different path to the European world by looking to their cultural heritage as a source of new inspiration. And this is what I will now be dedicating my efforts towards, because what Europe offers is just the past masquerading as the future.

The European Commission is an affront to democracy. It is becoming a threat to democracy, liberty and the right of people to choose. The only way we can remove the European Commission (meaning Juncker and his College of Commissions and all the bureaucrats that work for them) from our lives is by voting to leave the EU. This is the circumstance that people such as Schuman and Monnet have bequeathed to us. The irony is that by seeking to avoid the past, they may have laid the foundations for the past once again to become the future, which is Europe’s history in a nutshell.

We cannot predict the future, but history does provide us with powerful lessons that we seem not to want to pay attention to. Back in 1933 if anyone had predicted what was about to happen in Europe they would have been dismissed as a lunatic. Yet knowing how Europeans have behaved since the time of the Roman Empire, and all the worst aspects of Ancient Greek beliefs that are still deeply embedded in European culture, what happened between 1933 and 1945 can be seen as the past reinvented, but on a far more destructive scale.

“Probably it is true that the very magnitude of the outrages committed by the totalitarian governments, instead of increasing the fear that such a system might one day arise in this country, has rather strengthened the assurance that it cannot happen here. When we look at Nazi Germany the gulf which separates us seems so immense that nothing that happens there can possess relevance for any possible developments in this country. And the fact that the difference has steadily become greater seems to refute any suggestion that we may be moving in similar directions. But let us not forget that fifteen years ago the possibility of such a thing happening in Germany would have appeared just as fantastic, not only to nine-tenths of the Germans themselves, but also to the most hostile foreign observers however wise they may now pretend to have been.”

The words are Hayek’s, written in 1944, and taken from the book that I have already mentioned.

Already it seems we have forgotten this recent past and are now willing to trust our future to a dictatorship of technocrats in the belief that this will not happen again. It will, but in a different form.

Now is the time to take steps to prevent this.

The UK’s EU Referendum: We the People will choose …

On Thursday, we the People will choose …

Thursday, June 23^rd, will be a day that will live forever in British history, for it will be the day when the British people voted for democracy (leave the EU) or for technocracy (remain in the EU). This is the nature of the choice that is now before the British people and here are some notes and observations about this most important event.

We the people are being asked to decide. This is an excellent thing, for what is democracy, if we the people are never asked to decide, especially on matters so profound and which are constitutional in nature? People who believe in democracy should be celebrating this commitment to listening to the people and then acting on their decision. But what I note is that there are many people who do not celebrate this, and all of them as far as it is possible to tell, have vested (economic/financial) interests for the UK to remain within the EU. And I include within this group Juncker and his elitist political class whose commitment to democracy is limited to fine words and images. I cannot imagine Juncker and the leaders of the major European powers celebrating the power of democracy if the result is not what they want. In fact, all the signs are of an elite class that is willing to make threats to the British people and to use fear as their weapon. This is most certainly counter-productive. And the true nature of the elite that runs the European Union became all too clear with the treatment of the Greek people during the euro crisis. Do you really want to be part of a club that operates in such a way? Is it not time to take a stand against these people?

It has been an extraordinary time the past few weeks. We have been told that the world will come to an end on Friday June 24^th, whatever the outcome! There is misinformation coming from both sides. And when the opinion polls started to show a shift towards the Leave camp, the Remain camp began to engage in personal attacks on leading figures in the Leave camp, and to engage in scaremongering. The Remain camp has been playing the fear card, with their predictions of economic Armageddon taking place as a result of a leave decision. All sorts of claims have been made, yet the truth is that no-body knows what will happen if we should decide to leave. It will create uncertainty, but not the economic meltdown that the Remain camp is implying.

Most of what has come out of the Remain camp has been highly negative. Putting aside the matter of UKIP and their right-wing extremism which is also negative, the people who are starting to emerge from the debate with the most credibility or those leading the Leave camp. They have something positive to say and to offer, and have become more convincing that the Remain camp.

The most negative of the comments made during the past week came from the Chancellor of the Exchequer who promised an emergency budget that would cut public spending and raise taxes as a way of punishing the British people if we decide to leave. His credibility has been destroyed by this and it looks as though his days are numbered in this post. In saying this he seems to have forgotten that the matter of an emergency budget lies with the Cabinet, and its implementation lies in approval from Parliament, and many MPs from across the political spectrum have now declared that they will oppose such a budget. Perhaps the Chancellor of the Exchequer should head off to Brussels and become a European Commissioner, because there he would be able to implement such a move without the consent of elected representatives of the people.

What will happen on Friday June 24 if we decide to leave is that the Government will do what a Government is supposed to do and that is to start taking the responsible actions that will be needed to ensure that all the predictions of doom do not come about, and they will be able to start doing this, freed from the restrictions imposed on it by unelected politicians, bureaucrats and technocrats in Brussels.

If we do decide to leave, then on Friday June 24^th some people think that we will have isolated ourselves from Europe. Some have even said we will not have access to the Single Market. But how are the bureaucrats in Brussels going to stop European people and companies buying goods and services from the UK? Will they be policing the internet and knocking on doors in the early hours of the morning? They certainly know how to do such a thing, having much experience of operating police states!

This access issue is an example of the misinformation that we have been subjected to. The question is not one of access, for people from outside the EU, e.g. the Americans, have access to the Single Market. The question is instead, one of terms and conditions for access, and the worst case scenario is that we will have access on the same terms as, for example, the Americans – WTO rules!

Of course they, the EU might want to play difficult. Or it may be that common sense will prevail. One factor not much considered in all the scaremongering and threats from foreign politicians, is whether Juncker and the others would be willing to put at risk their jobs and growth agenda and to potentially destabilise the euro, just to be vindictive towards the UK. Are they really going to start a mini-trade war with the UK? It would seem that it is in the interests of both parties to have an amicable divorce.

Perhaps therefore what we will see in public are temper tantrums, but behind the scenes, desperate attempts to save the EU and to ensure that nothing is done to damage what they see as the European economy.

The British, it is said, do best when their backs are to the wall. History tends to support this view.  It is also a truth not sufficiently understood that there would be no democracy in Europe if Britain had not acted in the past to counter and oppose the tyranny and oppression that has so often been part of the continental way. At the moment we see, yet again, this time in the form of the EU, another threat to democracy coming this time from unelected politicians, bureaucrats and that insidious thing called technocracy. The College of Commissioners is what the body of European Commissioners collectively call themselves. It is however more like something one would have found in the Soviet Union, a kind of Central Committee, with bureaucrats making plans for the economy. It is most definitely the Road to Serfdom. ICT ART CONNECT (STARTS) is an example of this, which also reveals the corrupt nature of the relationships that can exist between the European Commission and its experts – it’s all about getting your hands on public money and the EC uses this as a way of implementing what its wants to do! And then they wonder why the European economy is failing!

Surely it is now time deal with the unelected Juncker and his technocrats? The European Union is a failing institution. The European Commission is a failing institution. They are the past not the future. Surely it is time to abandon these failures and reach out to a future that is not controlled by unelected politicians and bureaucrats operating a Soviet style system of running a country and an economy?

We, the British people, are a strange breed. We have done some bad things in the world and are far from being perfect, but when it counts, we have made a stand, which has usually involved putting aside short term interests and sacrificing the economic in favour of what is right. Now is the time to make such a stand.

The EU as it is now constituted is a result of changes that have been made without the consent of the people. Not once were we, the people of the UK, asked if what was being created by the political class is what we wanted. Now, we the people have a chance to have our say. It is time to send an unambiguous message to all politicians who dream of gaining power and acting without the consent of the people.

We have also been watching with interest the opinion polls, but we are not sure if they are telling an accurate story. They suggest that the nation is divided. Over the past two weeks the picture emerging is one of a swing towards the Leave camp. As of today it does look as though we are heading for the exit door, but, as the day to vote approaches, people may decide to opt for what they think is the safe option. And there are still a few days to go, so the pressure on both sides to convince the voters will continue!

Although there is much scaremongering about the economy, the issues for a large number of people is the free movement of people across the EU which is resulting in, many people feel, the destruction of British culture. This however seems to be the unspoken policy objective – to blend the many cultures found in Europe into one, because with a Single Market, goes a single currency, and a single culture, from which comes a single nation with, they think, an economy to rival that of China. Fantasies – for what will come from this is right wing extremism and civil strife, which the far right will use to strengthen their position.

Many people feel that they are wrongly being branded as racist and xenophobic for expressing concern about loss of identity. It is clearly an issue that needs to be addressed by the politicians, but they have no power to deal with the matter because their hands are tied by Brussels, and there this is seen an ideological issue over which there will be no compromise.

Most importantly however, the core issue is one of democratic control and accountability which has been denied the people. There is a simple fact: the EU is not democratic and is beyond reform. It needs to be sent into the pages of the history books where it will eventually be seen for what it is – the past becoming the future as once again, those with power, attempt, without the agreement of the people, to create a European Empire. We do not want such an Empire for it will eventually bring into being all those things that people fear from Europe’s past. You are most certainly not done yet with your wars and your camps and the EU, when the political, economic and social conditions are right, will one day become those things once again, for you have not understood that these things are deeply embedded in your culture, and only when you stop being European will you stop these terrible things.

Economies wax and wane as they are subject to the vagaries of markets, decision-makers and consumers. Democracy though is different, being easily broken, and difficult to recover once lost. Democracy needs to endure for it is the only means we have of protecting ourselves from people like Juncker, from the Brussels bureaucrats, and from the technocrats. Without democracy our only resort to freedom becomes revolution, and you know what that leads to.

Sadly, the week ended on a tragic note with the murder of a MP in her constituency. Campaigning was suspended for a few days as a mark of respect. Meanwhile, a shift became noticeable: foreign politicians stopped making threats and began pleading for the UK to remain so that we could work together to reform the EU.

But politicians who say such things have not got the message – we no longer trust politicians, and we know all too well what will happen. If we vote to remain, they make some minor adjustments, and then proceed on their way doing what they want to do, without our consent, heading to a place where we do not want to go, which will just fuel more right-wing extremism.

We have only one way to remove Juncker and the Brussels bureaucrats, and that way is to vote to leave, which will also allow us to diffuse the problems that are fuelling the rise of the extreme right. Ironically, by voting to leave we will be able to rid ourselves of UKIP, who will only grow in popularity and power if we stay. And the economic price, if there is one (which is very uncertain) is worth paying.

I would love the UK to remain in the EU, but I now know we must leave if we are to avoid being part of the sad story of events that is unfolding in continental Europe. Whatever the outcome I will not be having any further involvement with the European Commission once my present contract is finished. It is time to leave Europe and to help build a different world to the one that the imperial Europeans are trying to create.

Thus, on Thursday, we the People will choose …

And because this is so important, on Tuesday I will be publishing a special blog based on inside knowledge. For 30 years I have been involved with the European Commission and I now know that it is time to speak out and to condemn them for what they are, what they represent and what they are doing.

UK’s EU Referendum: President Barack Obama decrees the transformation of the US into an EU style technocracy!

“My fellow Americans, I speak to you today as the bringer of good news!

“As you may know, the British people are being asked to decide on whether they wish the United Kingdom to be part of the European Union. Recently on a trip to the United Kingdom, I urged the British people to vote to remain in the European Union, as membership is, self-evidently I believe, in their economic interests.

“Having now reflected long on the matter, and following the principle that what is good for the goose is also good for the gander, I have today signed a Presidential Order, abolishing the United States of America, its constitution, Congress, the Supreme Court, the US Civil Service and the Office of President of the United States of America. This will take effect on January 1^st 2017.

“On this date a new form of government, modelled on that of Ancient Greece will come into effect, whereby the political elite, the free people who think, will run the country, while you, the American people, the slaves, will work. You will no longer need to worry about thinking – just get on with the job of making and spending money, while we think and take decisions on your behalf. You will of course have no say in any of this and no right, through the ballot box, to call us to account.

“On January 1^st 2017, the United States of America will become the American Union. Congress will be replaced by an American Parliament, consisting of elected Members. This body will have very limited powers and will be largely symbolic because its main purpose is to create an impression of democracy.

“A new body called the Council of State Governors will be formed. This body will meet from time to time in Washington DC. One of its roles will be to appoint, every five years, on an arbitrary basis, someone to be President of the American Commission, along with a group of people who will be called American Commissioners, who collectively will be called the College of Commissioners, or alternatively, the Central Committee of the American Union.

“To ensure the arbitrariness of the appointments, every five years the decision who will be President will be taken according to the direction the wind is blowing from in Washington DC on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November. If the wind is coming from a Northerly direction a Democratic President and Commission will be appointed which will bring some warmth to the American Union. If the wind is blowing from a Southerly direction, a Republican President and Commission will be appointed to bring a chill to the Union.

The Supreme Court will be replaced by the American Courts of Justice, which will have precedence over all State Legislatives and Courts.

The American civil service will be replaced by the body called the American Commission who will be a collection of bureaucrats and technocrats, to whom vast powers will be delegated, which will enable them to pursue their own agendas within the terms defined by a wide-ranging treaty. You, the people, will have no control over this new body. They will, as they think fit, exert control over your life, and you will just have to live with that!

“There will be no written constitution. This flexible arrangement is convenient – for us!

“I think that you will agree that this system suits everyone. In particular it suits the politicians who will serve on the Central Committee, for they will obtain power without any need to stand for election, and they will not ever have to explain themselves to you, the people, or to suffer the humiliation of being rejected by you, when, as will be the case, they do the wrong things. Think of this in a positive way – the enduring, unchanging nature of your government will help to ensure economic stability; admittedly at the price of freedom and democracy, but think of the self-evident economic benefits!

“I have now a few words of advice for the new appointee to President. First, how to deal with State Governors who complain and criticise and advocate more power being transferred to State level? All you need to do is to brand them as popularists who are far too concerned with responding to the wishes of the electorate than with the pursuit of the American Union Project. I refer you to the role model that is Jean-Claude Juncker, the current appointed President of the European Commission, who demonstrates breath-taking arrogance, and admirable contempt for the views of the electorate – the people. Second, how to deal with the circumstances that will eventually develop, when all your technocratic ideas start to fail and the Union begins to disintegrate. Again I refer you again to Juncker – create a bubble and disconnect yourself from reality, and push for even more technocratic notions of a unity without the consent of the people. This of course brings me to my final words of advice – always undertake your far reaching constitutional changes without the consent of the people, for you are a technocrat, a member of a political elite, and the views of ordinary people and what they want must never be allowed to stand in the way of your delusions of achieving a rebirth of the Roman Empire.

“It has been a great honour serving you as your last democratically elected President. Don’t worry! Everything will be fine. Trust me on this, for I am a Politician.

“God bless the American Union.”

ICT, Art and STARTS: DG CONNECT and STEM peoples’ intention to use art to manipulate the public …

“To help to more gracefully embed science and technology in society.”

As soon as I heard this I recognised the sinister implications of what DG CONNECT wanted to use art for – to manipulate the public into accepting whatever scientist and technologists create. This is something one would have expected to hear in Moscow, in the Soviet Union, in the past, but we hear it from Brussels, from the European Commission, in the present. And also in many other places as well, all of which are part of the STEM world. The monster that John Dewey wrote about in 1920 has arrived!

Let us be clear – this statement about embedding science and technology in society is one of the reasons why DG CONNECT is interested in art. This is a matter of public record, and to ensure that this is not forgotten is one of the reasons why I created the online ICT-ART CONNECT archive. DG CONNECT’s other reason is image making, for they have a very tarnished image. And it is also now a matter of public record that many artists and arts organisations did collaborate with DG CONNECT. Their names too are recorded in the archive.

In my recent blog, the one that goes by the title ‘When a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology asks questions …”, I mentioned that some STEM people, from very prestigious institutions, had made very clear that their intention is to use art to manipulate the minds of the public into accepting science and technology – the true meaning of embedding more gracefully.

It is truly Orwellian vision that these STEM people have! The phrases they use are: “When the emotions are targeted, individuals pay more attention to a particular event and commit to the cause, storing information in their long-term memory” and “… psychological ambiguity, in which the basic ideas and norms are broken down or weakened, and this disorientation allows individuals to reposition their points of view” and “the incorporation of art into communication of technology can promote new ways of considering issues, appeal to emotions, and form a celebratory atmosphere.”

I have been warning for some time the STEM people’s interest is using art is not benign. But mostly what I hear are STEM people and their ‘artists in residence’, creating a ‘celebratory atmosphere’ that is likely to leave both groups with tarnished reputations, and titles such as ‘distinguished’ looking somewhat empty. Enthusiastic but naïve practitioners! Enthusiasm though is dangerous and no substitute for critical thinking. Thus do the art/science and art/technology mutual admiration societies create the zone of discredited practice! And thus do we take up the pen …

I refer people to the second definition of collaborate that I provided in last week’s blog.

You will pay a heavy price by becoming involved with DG CONNECT and all those STEM people itching to use art to restore their tarnished images and to manipulate the public so that the STEM world’s techno-science delusions and technocratic intentions can become a reality. But there is a pen waiting here, and as I said two weeks ago, “the pen is far mightier that the Scanning Electron Microscope and other such boy’s toys.”  

Thus the artistic voices that DG CONNECT silenced, will be heard, and people will know that DG CONNECT did silence these voices.

Quietly and slowly, determination to expose the true nature of DG CONNECT and their collaborators will pay-off in the end. And the critique becomes a book with the title: STARTS – Science, Technology and the Arts: The artistic voices that DG CONNECT silenced. A British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication record has already been generated. The publication date is set for October 1^st 2016. And from the critique came forth …

The next book, even stranger than the one just mentioned, is already taking shape, in which, people who think they can appropriate art, the very ones mentioned above, encounter people – monsters – from the recent past who are somewhat interested in these STEM people and what they can do to help them create a celebratory atmosphere! And we are just warming-up!