ALLIANCE FO§ DEMOCRACY

Crucial Test with International Implications

In a Facebook post on 7 May 2016, the Alliance for Democracy (MFD) called on our people’s representatives to oppose CETA and therefore the TTIP as well. We repeated that call in a letter to the members of the Bundestag, to which we attached a legal opinion prepared by members of MFD which explained, like so many other expert opinions, the harm that CETA/TTIP will do.

We sent a similar letter to the Prime Minister of the German State of Thuringia, Mr. Bodo Ramelow, who, as the representative of the German Left Party, must understand the problem with CETA/TTIP. Although, as a national party, the LEFT has surrendered to the power plays of the Grand Coalition (GroKo), there must be a way to find agreement in the Bundestag on the CETA/TTIP question and make a decision based on conscience instead of partisan loyalty.

The president of the German Constitutional Court, Andreas Voßkuhle, urged all members of the parliament to be conscientious when the issue was the approval of the ESM/Fiscal Pact. We recall one of the great Eurocratic coups, which continues to keep those same Eurocrats in power to this day, although ESM loans, because of the silent collapse of the capital markets (equities, bonds and real-estate), and the constantly declining value of the euro, are covered through loans or entail the immediate bankruptcy of the euro country that is not receiving any more loans (Greece). We can be very sceptical that a conscientious decision was made at the time on the ESM/Fiscal Pact.

CETA and TTIP also amount to fraud, because European and U.S. economic standards are based on opposing principles. In the U.S. and Canada, products are approved for the simple purpose of generating profits. There are no studies on the benefit or harm of these products. The product is manufactured, marketed and sold, and the manufacturers make profits.

If it turns out that the product is harmful to humans, animals or the environment, various procedures must be followed to remove it from the market. Victims are compensated if a court decides this. This is followed by bankruptcies and businesses changing hands and is the trademark of predatory capitalism that wreaks havoc in the North American countries. This system is driven by a handful of incredibly wealthy elites who seek to control the world’s markets with this scam.

So-called market-based capitalism (following the American principle), which came to the Federal Republic of Germany after 1945 and has been expanded considerably under Angela Merkel, is bound by laws that do not endorse predatory capitalism à la Rockefeller, Carnegie and Vanderbilt. The latter did not call themselves predators but robber barons, and disputed this interpretation of the term robber baron while turning the clock back on business practices to the feudal times of the Old World (Europe), which liberated itself from this medieval system after revolutions and all kinds of upheaval.

The successors to the robber barons, the Silicon Valley billionaires, today’s elite, the rulers of the banks and the monetary system, hinder progress of society around the world toward a free-market economy based more on participation and solidarity than on mere profits. The supremacy of the United States, or the sole right to decide how feudal the world may be to increase profit, is the only concrete objective of CETA and TTIP as well, but the differences between the systems are no longer negotiable.

In Germany, a product is approved when it is clear that it does not harm humans, animals or the environment. It may be introduced to the market (only after years in many cases, which is very costly) when it is clear how the product is manufactured, which employees, with which qualifications, are hired to develop the business idea, and how and where the factory will be built to manufacture and distribute the product. The principle that everyone works to receive a share as a reward, to make a life for themselves and have access to education, health care and welfare (especially when they retire) in a secure society has been weakened in recent years by Angela Merkel's erroneous policies. Because our ideas and political structures are based on this system, we speak of the corruption of democracy, which in Germany was destined to become a sham democracy, with the help of U.S. influence.

CETA and the TTIP highlight these different market principles, but also the differences between a feudal profit-based society, which the U.S. economy represents, and so-called representative democracy, on which Europe’s, and particularly Germany’s, interests depends. If CETA and the TTIP take effect, Angela Merkel will have taken a step toward feudalism, which sets us all back in our evolution. The Alliance for Democracy had to call upon our people’s representatives to finally take a stand against this historical error, because the German people no longer have an opportunity to appeal to the highest courts in the land. So, it is high time that the political powers of our country come together to use the political means still available to them to prevent a system that now only exists in one country in the world, which seeks to impose it on a world that has long freed itself from it.

It is commendable that other organisations have prepared actions in the meantime to oppose CETA before the Constitutional Court. Die Zeit newspaper reports on joint actions by the citizen groups Campact, Foodwatch and Mehr Demokratie (“More Democracy”), while other papers are reporting individual initiatives to obtain a hearing by gathering signatures in Karlsruhe. With all due respect for these actions, the Alliance for Democracy must note that none of them will be successful because the Constitutional Court will not recognise any of these organisations as an “affected party,” as was the case recently with ESM. The Alliance for Democracy also filed an action against the ESM/Fiscal Pact; the action was ruled inadmissible, as were those of many other activists. The ESM was ultimately successful after a ruling that it was “not unconstitutional or questionable on constitutional grounds” – one of many perversions of justice in connection with the euro crisis with bailout measures that have been called political mismanagement and even high treason.

The Alliance for Democracy drew a lesson from this: Not even a sham democracy counts for anything in our country anymore. The conditions for citizens to access constitutional judges have been made impossible. For this reason, the Alliance for Democracy went directly to the people’s representatives this time. They alone have the power to bring the appropriate action to our highest court. Time will tell if the people’s representatives can or will act on behalf of the people.

If it turns out that the aforementioned institutions cannot bring an action before the court, there will be no party programme, no campaign slogan and no more political efforts in Germany that do not entail the legal consequence of annulment by emergency laws.

If it turns out that no action is brought by these officials, then Germany is lost as a democratic, social welfare state and as an economic power – sacrificed for an idea that European and German politicians lost sight of because they saw it as their responsibility instead of pursuing policies that benefit the people.