Trouble With Brussels Sprouts?

22/06/04

Phillip Day

The word was quickly passed.

A million alternative health networks shuddered involuntarily like cobwebs vibrating in the evening breeze as the shocking news spread: the European Union was going to seize the vitamins and the herbals. The drug industry was having its long-awaited spasm and clamping down on 'unregulated' nutritional treatments to shore up the millions in drug revenues it was losing to the vitamin 'quacks'. Something sinister called Codex Alimentarius was casting its Big Brother shadow across the Eurozone. Americans and other world populations looked on with apprehension.

The Campaign for Truth in Medicine, which I represent, received its initial briefing on the Euro move to regulate the alternative health industry's supplements quite a while ago. As we snuffled around, we discovered that getting information on the proposed legislation was like trying to pull a string of sausages out of the jaws of an elkhound. No-one in the EU seemed to be talking or willing to show their hand. Real information was sketchy. The rumour mill chuntered away on overtime.

As different muddy angles on the European vitamin affair began to materialise, our excavations soon began moving away from the draconian European Directive on Vitamin Supplements and settled on an altogether more culpable target - the real zero - the European Union itself.

THE EU SUPPLEMENTS DIRECTIVE - WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT? On 12th March 2002, while Samantha and I were preparing for our seminar in Norwich, England, the breeze suddenly stiffened and a piece of legislation silently passed hundreds of miles to the south-east. With barely a ripple in the ether, the EU had voted and passed the directive which would limit the upper intakes of hundreds of nutrients to ridiculously low levels - in certain cases, 1/50th or even less of what many nutritional doctors recommend as therapeutic doses.

Like Germany and France, many were now facing the prospect of not just severe censure in the amounts of nutrients they could take, but what they could buy at all. For, hidden within the Trojan Horse 'harmonisation' proposals used to justify entering the launch codes against the nutritional supplements industry, was the realisation that anything not on the EU list of 'accepted' supplements was now in for an outright ban. Manufacturers who wished to field anything atrociously 'new' would be required to spend millions proving benefit through exhaustive 'drug testing' - a state of affairs guaranteed to bankrupt even the most stalwart of the green corporations.

For 13 years, European pharmaceutical conglomerates have been contemplating a standardised market for vitamin and mineral supplements in order to bring these threatening red-headed stepchildren into check. Various attempts to harmonise the industry met with sustained opposition, not least from the UK government and its vitamin consumers. In January 2000, the Brussels Commission, during one of those rare, brief periods in which it was not being found guilty of fraud and accounting corruption, tabled a White Paper on Food Safety. A later document, 500PC0222 (what sort of monster invents that kind of archiving system?) concluded that a wide disparity existed on alternative medicine dosages, and proposed legislation to correct the imbalance. In France and Germany, for instance, no products containing more than one times the Recommended Daily Allowance may be sold without a drug licence.

And this is a problem. Vitamin C's RDA is 40-60mg. Yet the therapeutic dosage of C begins at 500mg and goes up beyond 10,000mg. So if you wish to treat yourself with megadoses of Vitamin C for your cancer, best visit Homebase now and buy up a wheelbarrow in readiness to haul all those expensive, tiny vitamin pills back to base-camp.

MASSIVE PUBLIC BACKLASH TO NO AVAIL Most UK Members of the Euro Parliament (MEPs) voted against the vitamin initiative, which nevertheless passed. In spite of some 400 million pieces of mail, e-mails, faxes and skywritings thrown at Brussels vociferously protesting this attack on human rights - naturally along with the predictable media black-out - the motion was approved, with 383 MEPs in favour and 139 against. Considerable resources had been expended by the pharmaceutical industry to lobby members for their vote. The public's outrage was ignored.

So where are we now? There is an intervening period currently occurring which is designed to allow member states to pass laws aligning themselves with the new directive. Products that do not comply with the directive will be banned after 1st June 2005. Upper safe limits have been arbitrarily allocated to such a conservative list of nutrients, over which supplement dosage will be regulated, that the vast majority of other, more specialised nutrients not included on the list will be effectively cleared from the shelves of most UK, Dutch and Irish health stores, along with even the common stuff, such as vitamins C and B6, which are always sold in potencies exceeding the EU mandate.

The facts amount to this: unless a concerted effort is made en masse by the affronted citizenry, the Euro super-state will have its way, and in a few short years from now, the Darth Vader nutrition police will be able to screech up outside your vitamin shack and clear your shelves of the recently designated 'contraband' nutrients.

Will mass public protests work? Well, they didn't with the vitamin vote. Maybe if enough people join up with the hardworking international organisations committed to fighting this particular directive, a political 'hot-potato' of sufficient aggravation can be created, which may have the intended effect of getting the Euro-Feds to back off. But for how long? How many months would pass before another effort was mounted to shoe-horn yet another directive down the uncooperative gullet of the beleaguered Euro-citizen? After years of seeing asinine, fourth-grade Gestapo legislation coming out of the EU, hamstringing its member states with an insane web of 'Don't do this…', 'And definitely don't do that…', hopefully we are all getting a clear picture of the kind of corrupt, bureaucratic, totalitarian police state that is coming down the pipe at us who shiver on these northern Euro-shores.

THE COMING SOVIET-STYLE MEGASTATE Very few Britons know the real goods on the EU, and our politicians with lofty aspirations have perfected the art of duplicity to keep it that way. Some 'think no evil, hear no evil' vacationers I spoke to recently thought Britain integrating into Europe was great, believing the whole EU issue was merely one of convenience, so we wouldn't have to change our currency on our way to enjoy the sun in Alicante. The real story of the EU's ambitions however is more sobering and frightening.

Once Britain is part of the European Union, the move becomes 'irreversible'. What this means is, if we don't like it, then the only way we get out is to declare war against the whole of Europe… and win. The only way we did that last time was with the help of America, Australia, Canada, South Africa and our other allies, which Britain is increasingly being taught to scorn. Since our proud navy, once the most mighty the world had ever seen, has now been reduced to a few non-descript, barely seaworthy frigates, fighting on our own against the Beast of Brussels probably won't fly.

As true 'little Englanders' of a future European Soviet-style state, most in Britain do not know that our trial-by-jury system under habeus corpus is about to be scrapped. Measures are already being implemented to 'harmonise' our once proud legal system and gut the whole idea of being innocent until proven guilty. Your case will eventually be heard by a tribunal of judges, some of whom already have a well known proclivity for corruption and exchanging political favours. The first you will know of the difference is when you are arrested and deported to the Continent under suspicion of having committed a crime and held indefinitely without trial. No prima facie evidence will any longer be required to be presented and tested first in a British court to protect you.

Riots occurring in Britain could be put down by the new Euro-Police, known as Europol, and even by German, French and Spanish troops rumbling through the convenient Tunnel to sort us out. For the first time in 1,000 years, we could have foreign soldiers rousting British citizens on their own soil. Can you see the headlines now… even supposing we will still have a free press?

Our powerhouse economy, the envy of Germany and France, operates in step with those of America, Canada and our Commonwealth cousins rather than Europe. Under new harmonisation laws designed to bring Britain into the socialism of the Continent, our economic vibrancy would be decimated as it is forced to align itself with the shaky systems of the Eurozone. Tax increases of 20% are on the cards to standardise the member states to the new single economy and stabilise the Euro. A few years ago, Gordon Brown sold 415 tons of our gold bars to Europe - over 50% of our reserve stocks - to prop up the ailing euro, which nevertheless continued to slide.

The original European Common Market has been subtly changed into the European Union of today through a process of gradualism and progressive treaties, without the British people's understanding or consent. While European politicians make no secret of their desire for an integrated superstate to protect their traditionally wobbly borders, British politicians have consistently fudged the issue, because they know the British people wouldn't take the loss of sovereignty and control over their own affairs.

The Treaty of Rome and its successive amendments decree that once Brussels has acquired a power from the nation states, that power can never be given back (known as the 'acquis communautaire', or 'the ratchet'). If you don't like it. Well, tough.

CORRUPT AND ROTTEN TO THE CORE It is generally agreed that at least 10% of the EU's £62 billion annual budget goes in fraud and mismanagement. Paul van Buitenen was the EU-appointed auditor who brought down Jacques Santer's European government on fraud charges in 1999 by highlighting the worst financial scandal in Euroland's history. Van Buitenen was able to show that billions of Euros had been 'misappropriated' (read embezzled) by members of the EU élite, such as the notorious French commissioner, Edith Cresson, whose live-in 'dentist' even became an beneficiary. Imagine the British National Lottery. And then imagine it out of control. But then I repeat myself.

Because of his revelations, van Buitenen was subsequently suspended without pay by the EU Commission, the very target of his corruption investigations, while the officials he had accused of serious crimes were themselves suspended on full pay. Van Buitenen was later vindicated when a further panel upheld his accusations, resulting in the resignation of Santer's entire EU Commission in 1999. Also viewed with misgivings has been the Gestapo-like treatment of the EU's own chief accountant, Marta Andreasen, who had the temerity to declare that the EU's £62 billion budget was 'out of control'. Andreasen claimed to have been followed in the streets by a gang of men in an apparent attempt to intimidate her. To this day, anyone trying to expose fraud or corruption within the EU can expect harsh treatment and shady future career prospects. Is it any wonder that most just shut up and do nothing?

NONE DARE CALL IT TREASON Up to 30,000 directives have slewed themselves onto the UK books since this catastrophically inept euro-federalisation plot began executing itself on Britain in the 1970s. Only a handful of these were even discussed in the UK parliament. As for the vitamin directive, it is my considered opinion that to execute one or even a series of blows against the head of this asinine legislation will be woefully inadequate - another head of the hydra will simply grow in its place.

With the EU, we are dealing with a jungle of vested interest bureaucracies that have to justify their continued budgets and very reasons for existing. Corruption is commonplace and nobody thinks anything of it. Perhaps understandably, Euroland has gained the hearty support of politicians everywhere because it guarantees their survival and continued junk-funding in perpetuity even if they fall from power in their own countries. Tony Blair is considering himself a future President of Europe once he is out of power in Britain, which is why he has been greasing the Spanish vote by trying to give them back Gibraltar. British government's attempts to unload Gibraltar didn't work in 1967, when, in the Gibraltar Referendum, the population was asked to vote for or against retaining the link with Britain. It was 12,138 in favour and only 44 against. Unfortunately, such was the strength of feeling that, when the names of a few of the dissenters leaked out, they felt it wise to leave the Rock.

THE REAL GOAL - INDEPENDENCE No. There is an altogether simpler solution to the vitamin problem, and one that will send shivers of fear throughout Brussels and its puppy-dog, Legoland co-parliament in Strasbourg - and one I think fitting for a Credence project in the coming months. Britain must do the one thing that makes sense; the one thing Euroland dreads, and that is to execute our veto and leave the EU. Britain for decades has been told by its treacherous left-wing liberal élitists that it is garbage; that it is 'The Sick Man of Europe'; that it can't even win football and cricket matches, that it needs the new socialist megastate. We have been made to feel guilty about our history, our achievements, our military might, our financial prowess, our fishing industry, our monarchy, our coal and steel, our North Sea Oil, our great statesmen and -women, our countryside, our erstwhile morality and incorruptibility. In short, we have been emasculated by fifth-columnists from within our own country, who have forbidden us, through political correctness, to speak our minds. They have encouraged the weaker among us to snigger at every British institution. We have been repeatedly told that Britain's only hope is to throw in her lot with the Continent.

The irony however is more interesting and heartening. Like a drug-dealer telling his customers that they cannot do without him, The European Union has got itself into such a mess, it may in fact need Britain's gold reserves, financial markets, pensions funds and other paraphernalia herself to survive. You see, Britain is not rubbish, but in fact the fourth largest economy on Earth. She is the prize on which the empire-building politicians of Germany and France have set their sights (what's new?). She has the greatest, most prolific financial trading centre in the world based in London, whose earning power alone exceeds that of many nations. We have the greatest innovators. We pioneered the Internet, the jet engine, free-market economics and television. We have brilliant artists, businessmen, industrialists and scientists. We once had a system of education and government that was so much the envy of the world that other nations to this day still copy them. Britain, described as 'crap' by three politicians in this country, is still 'crap' enough to be the number-one destination of choice in Europe for immigrants, entrepreneurs and inward investment capital. Like the brilliant kid repeatedly told by his peers that he is a worthless failure, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England have been cowed into believing the worst of themselves by the politically correct legions of the left who have always hated what Britain has traditionally stood for. How many of these snivellers have ever been to Russia and seen for themselves what their 'equality' achieves in reality?

Many have also bought into the idea that the EU will safeguard peace in Europe. In fact, all the stark and realistic indications are so very clearly before us that the EU's catastrophic ineptness may guarantee war in Europe within the next twenty years for reasons we will examine in the next issue. Europe has been relatively peaceful and warless, not because of Jacques Santer, Francois Miterrand and Helmut Kohl, but because NATO has been visibly willing to unleash hell on any invader or usurper who threatens the Continental status quo. No wonder the EU sees it as 'Top Priority' to rubbish our erstwhile ally America, marginalise NATO, form its own European army, federal police force, intelligence agencies and punitive justice system with Germany and France as the most influential players. Am I the only one getting goose-bumps at the déjà vu of goose-steps?

All this over a bottle of Vitamin C? The supplements issue is just the tip of the iceberg. If the EU is such a great idea, why has Switzerland, with all its banks, resolutely refused to join? Why did Norway vote to stay out? Why did Greenland successfully negotiate her own withdrawal? These nations are strong and independent today, managing their own affairs without the corrupt nannying of Brussels. Why did Denmark's citizens begin rioting in the street when their 'no' vote to Maastricht was fiddled? For the first time in its history, Danish police fired on Danish citizens. You see, Norway, Switzerland and Denmark have some quite recent memories of what European integration tried to do for them and they don't want to repeat the experience. They just want to be left in peace doing what Norway, Switzerland and Denmark do best.

STANDING UP FOR WHAT YOU STAND FOR I am proud to be an Englishman. I am also proud to be associated with my chums in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland through the British political union, whatever the colour of their skin and slant of their beliefs. I think our true foreign immigrants, now British to their boots, have given a tremendous pool of skill and resourcefulness to our nation. Remember, you Scots chaps, Welshers and Ulstermen, our kin have shed blood together as brothers-in-arms in the far-flung corners of the world. Let's face facts. The reality is, our great-grandfathers drowned in the mud along with their horses at Passchendaele to liberate the French and the Belgians. Our grandfathers bulldozed the Nazi menace into scrap with the help of our American allies. Britain has bailed France out of trouble more times than a cat scratches its fleas. Britain never had the bad manners to start a war, but we've finished plenty. Our common law is the law of freedom, as enshrined in Magna Carta and the Declaration of Rights. It states that a citizen is innocent until proven guilty. A Britisher may do anything he desires, unless specifically forbidden by law. In Europe, under corpus juris, or Justinian, Napoleonic law, a citizen can do nothing unless specifically permitted by all those directives.

The poor Brits, dumbed down for years with their force-fed diets of junk TV, porn and insulting soaps, labouring under the overweight baggage of political failures such as Chris Patten, Leon Brittan, Edward Heath and Neil Kinnock, have sat silently appalled as their country has been sold down the Seine for a pocket full of beans and the promise of unaudited expense accounts. They have stirred themselves with anger over the vitamin issue, yet their sights are still aimed too low.

I've got a more worthy and effective target - The destruction of Britain's integration dealings with the EU altogether and the reclamation of our historical right to determine our own future, whatever that may be. "But that's isolationist! That's insular! That's so damned… British!" No, actually it makes perfect sense to over 60% of Britons who, according to surveys, don't want to scrap the pound and thus move into EU integration. And the politicians in Brussels know it. They realise we would reclaim our fishing industry, our agriculture industry, we would be free to adjudicate our North Sea oil and international trade without the chafing restriction of Belgian handcuffs. They see that we buy far more from the EU than it does from us, and even the terminally blinkered in Brussels would be insane to jeopardise this most valuable of trades, given the Union's current financial state of affairs. Won't the Germans still want to sell us their cars, the French their fine champagne and wines, the Dutch their bacon, and the Mediterranean countries their tourist destinations? Why do we need to pay the EU £1.3 million EACH HOUR to be a part of this most cataclysmic con-trick which always works against Britain's best independent interests?

If Britons must make a decision on Europe that will forever destroy her nationhood, sovereignty and individual, strident cadence, we would do well to get ourselves properly educated on the subject. For, if we mess up this time around, it's going to take a little more than Women's Institute cucumber sandwiches and Countryside Alliance placards to straighten out the mess for our children's sake.

I envision one Britain of the future. One that is eminently do-able. One that is independent, prosperous, democratic, well defended, dynamic, modern, flexible, competitive and unafraid. One that can look itself in the mirror and wink as it adjusts the suit and tie. One the world may truly behold and enviously acclaim. A Britain who is a friend to those in trouble. Who won't leave our erstwhile friends in the dirt. You know, the good, old bloke of a Brit who keeps his eye on the ball and won't run under fire.

Vitamins may be the flavour of the moment, but the real question remains: Brussels and mash anyone?

For a fuller explanation on the current moves within the EU that are NOT being widely disseminated by British politicians, obtain a copy of the book 'Vigilance', written by researcher Ashley Mote.