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The dangerous drift from democracy

In their attempt to manipulate public opinion in favour of European Union ambitions, the EU and the Irish government have brought into public view the difference between what they consider to be in the public interest, and what is actually of interest to the public.

The row over the use of propaganda in public consultation in the EU and Member States exposes the power shift, away from the people, through national State, into the hands of the European oligarchy.

We ignore it at our peril.

Doug Cross 6th October 2009

History has a habit of repeating itself.

For the second time in less than a decade the docile Irish public have been brow-beaten by their autocratic government over how they express their personal opinions. They have been asked to vote in a second Referendum on the EU Lisbon Treaty, apparently because they got it wrong when they were asked to vote the first time around, last year. But do not be misled into supposing that this has nothing to do with the issue of public opinion on water fluoridation.

In fact this autocratic expression of contempt for a national legal framework of a Member State mirrors the approach of both the British and Irish governments in their cynical manipulation of public opinion and their rejection of any expression of public opposition to their policies.

Briefly, the story behind the news is this. In 2001 a proposal to amend the Irish Constitution to ratify the EU’s Treaty of Nice was rejected in a referendum. But a year later the Government held a second ballot, in which the public finally got the ‘right’ answer and allowed a Constitutional Amendment that permitted the Treaty to be ratified by Ireland.

Now the Irish people have again been bullied into endorsing their Government's ambitions. A year ago they rejected a change to their Constitution that would allow the Republic to ratify the Lisbon Treaty establishing a European Constitution.

But it seems that once more they got it wrong, and now they have been told to go back and vote again. And this time, they finally got the right answer!

Of course, it’s not really as simple and clear-cut as that. Dublin has secured assurances that it will retain autonomy under the Treaty on a number of sensitive issues, including neutrality, abortion and taxation. These are to be protected - at least in theory - under new agreements with the EU. But behind the scenes the ‘NO’ vote is furious that the EU and the Irish Government acted illegally in improperly using taxpayers’ money to promote only the arguments for the Lisbon Treaty, contrary to both EU and Irish law.

The McKenna precedent.

The Irish people have been down this road before. In 1986 the Irish Supreme Court ruled that it is the Irish people, not its politicians, who alone can amend the country’s basic law, the Constitution. Any surrender of sovereignty to the European institutions must therefore be decided by the people themselves in a referendum.

Then in 1995, former MEP Patricia McKenna extended this judgment to persuade the Supreme Court to declare that the Irish government should not use taxpayers' money to influence public opinion before referenda.

Now Brussels has done just that, and in collaboration with the Irish Government attempted - apparently successfully - to influence public opinion. Now the Irish government could face a legal challenge that could disqualify last week’s 'YES' vote. Both the Commission and the Irish government have been accused of 'unlawful interference' in the Lisbon Referendum.

Anti-Lisbon protesters may now seek a similar legal injunction on the ratification of the vote under the terms of the Irish Constitution. Before the Referendum they demanded that the EU stop issuing copies of a booklet that was dismissed by legal experts as pure pro-Lisbon propaganda. Predictably, the Commission rejected the charge, saying that the pamphlet was intended only 'to educate voters'.

Pro-Lisbon or pro-fluoridation - diversion of taxpayers' money is equally offensive.

If all this sounds depressingly familiar to objectors to water fluoridation, this is hardly surprising. Precisely the same diversion of funds has been employed to promote water fluoridation in both the Republic of Ireland and in the UK. In both Member States, public funds are used to publish highly biased pro-fluoride propaganda, in a deliberate attempt to 'educate' a supposedly ignorant and stupid public into believing that fluoridation is safe and effective, when it is neither.

In Southampton earlier last year, the South Central Strategic Health Authority (SCSHA) rejected a 72% ‘NO’ vote from the public over the proposed fluoridation of the city’s water supply, on the extraordinarily offensive grounds that the public was not competent to make an informed decision. It then held its own telephone poll - a technique notoriously open to subversion - and found that the public still rejected fluoridation.

But significantly, it also discovered that those who professed to know a fair amount about fluoridation were far more likely to vote against it. This was a clear indication that fluoridation is supported mainly by those who are themselves too ignorant to be able to express an informed opinion!

Despite this, the British government continues to attempt to ‘educate’ the public of the ‘benefits’ of fluoridation. It persistently issues blatantly pro-fluoridation propaganda, just as the EU and the Irish government did in the latest Lisbon referendum. It has funded the absurd British Fluoridation Society (BFS) with over £1 million over the years, which has enabled it to infiltrate the whole of the NHS and spread its deplorable misinformation far and wide.

The disgraceful effects of this became all too obvious in the fiasco over plans to fluoridate Southampton. Although the BFS's direct funding from the Department of Health has now dried up, it is still supported covertly by NHS Primary Care Tusts as Corporate Members. Meanwhile, the spurious 'National Fluoride Information Centre' receives an annual grant of £125,000 from the Department of Health, to augment the propaganda of the BFS.

The need for a Public Inquiry.

The announcement of a Judicial Review of the legitimacy of the Fluoridation Consultation procedures put in place by Parliament has dramatically changed the game, however. An independent examination of the British government's persistent misappropriation of taxpayers' money to 'educate' the supposedly ignorant English on fluoridation is also long overdue.

The British and Irish governments' diversion of public funds to pay for the publication of expensive pro--fluoride propaganda is entirely comparable to the latest attempt by the EU Commission to improperly influence the Irish vote on Lisbon.

It is now time to call for a full Public Inquiry into the funding from taxpayers’ money of the propaganda that has been published in the UK by the British Fluoridation Society, the National Fluoride Information Centre, the North West Fluoridation Evaluation Group and the SCSHA.

Let us hope that, once the Irish ‘NO’ faction has got its teeth firmly into the EU Commission's latest fiasco over the Lisbon Treaty, they will then turn their attention to the activities of the Irish Expert Group on Fluoridation, their own domestic version of the BFS.

Political accessories? The disreputable role of the Regulators.

The entire charade of fluoridation in the UK and Ireland relies on pro-fluoride propaganda designed to brainwash the public. The claims so widely promoted by the pro-fluoride snake-oil salesmen are classed as criminal offences in both countries, prohibited under both the EC Medicines Directive of 1965 and the national legislation relating to the advertising of medicinal products. Subsequent rulings by the European Court of Justice reinforce the prohibition on these illegal medical claims.

Yet the medicines Regulators (the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency -MHRA - in the UK, and the Irish Medicines Board - IMB - in Ireland) are in full denial. Despite the clear evidence that they are failing to enforce their statutory duties, both persistently turn a blind eye to offences for which lesser fry than the government would automatically be prosecuted. In doing so, they are evading their responsibilities, and failing to protect the public from this bogus but virtually unavoidable illegal universal medication.

There can be only one explanation of the perverse failure to enforce the Medicines Directive by these unaccountable Regulators. The scientific and legal arguments against fluoridation are clear and unambiguous - the only possible explanation for their unwavering refusal to enforce the law is that they obey political instruction and policy, not the legal imperative to protect the public from fake medicines.

And, given the short period of exposure during infancy that can lead to life-long disfigurement from fluoride poisoning, both Regulators need to be subject to immediate independent legal scrutiny. If the Courts agree that they have deliberately failed to implement the law, then they should impose penalties that are fully appropriate to the scale of the damage that they have allowed to be caused to the public in their misplaced support of political expediency.

Governments must be accountable to the public, not the reverse.

It is time to haul the EU Commission, the UK and Irish governments, the Regulators and the fluoride propagandists before the Courts. They have acted with complete disregard for the legal and moral prohibition on attempting to influence public opinion on the discredited practice of water fluoridation.

This is a wake-up signal, exposing the increasing willingness of both national governments, and the Commission itself, to impose their own irrational and anti-democratic obsessions on the general public, ignoring their primary duty to provide a safe environment in which children can be protected from dangerous and illicit medical interventions.

The principle that the State should serve the public, and not the reverse, is of the utmost importance if the EU Super-State is to become a benevolent force for the benefit of its citizens. It must not be allowed to become dominated by the fascist mentality that characterised the last attempt to bring Europe under a single Executive, seventy years ago.

Within the European Super-State this deliberate disregard for the right of the public to make its own decisions on enforced medication, in direct contravention of the guarantees set out in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, is an issue that demands immediate rectification.

That the public should be regarded as being too ignorant to hold an informed opinion is a very serious challenge to democracy. Forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for their own political re-education by an increasingly fascist Super-State is a totally unacceptable development; expecting the people to formally endorse such chicanery is the ultimate obscenity.

So a full investigation into the political corruption that allows, and even encourages, taxpayers' money to be diverted to manipulate opinion, in attempts to ensure that the public is ripe for 'Consultation’, must now be a priority. And let us also hear who is personally responsible for persuading the Regulators to ignore their obligation to enforce the law and protect the public from such dangerous and improper propapaganda.

For the full text of the accusation that the Irish government and the EU illegally funded pro-fluoride propaganda to manipulate Irish public opinion over the second Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty,

CLICK HERE