"With words we govern men" – Disraeli

When the United States was declared independent, it drafted the Articles of the Confederation. For those who do not remember their US History – the US was a confederation in the beginning. Each state was a sovereign. It could raise an army, print its own currency, and have a government that was quite autonomous and independent from the other states in the union. The EU had a similar beginning. It took a long time for a federation to emerge, but now it can be safely said that there is a certainty to the creation of a union.

The EU, up until recently, could freely be considered a confederation. For the most part, each EU member state is sovereign. They can raise their own army, as one major point. They have independent governments who have an autonomous governmental structure that is able to deal with its internal affairs independently from other member states. There are Europhiles and Eurocrats (as in the Republican and Democrat parties in the US). One side of the spectrum advocates more power to Brussels, the other side is for more decentralized power. The list of similarities keeps on going. You can most likely fill it in yourself if you remember the history of the US and follow the development of the EU governmental structure.

The Lisbon treaty creates a single EU President. No longer will there be a rotation between the member states for the position of the EU President. There will be implemented a majority voting system that will allow the states to choose the leader. This, in itself, is centralizing more power in Brussels. Europhiles, such as Vaclav Klaus, have reason to stand firm because this directly goes against their belief that EU member states need to be more sovereign. The creation of a single EU President will allow for more power to be gathered in Brussels and will decrease, in the long run, the sovereignty of EU member states’ internal governments.

The most interesting, and probably even more important point of the Lisbon Treaty is the creation of a single post for a representative for foreign affairs. The first purpose of this point is self evident – it gives the EU a single voice on the international level and will allow Europe to be represented as a single political body.

In the long run, there will no longer be deal making between France and China, for example. There will be deals between Europe and China. This does have benefits. All EU member states’ interests will be considered in international affairs. However, if there is a deal that benefits France alone and does not really concern the other countries in that it does not carry any externalities with it, the potential deal will be harmful to France and slow down the process of international bargaining. The foreign minister needs to answer to a higher authority – that authority is the newly created EU President post. In essence, the consolidation of the power to represent the EU on the international level in one post reaffirms and gives more power to Brussels.

The last point, about majority voting, allows EU member states to be proportionally represented. This makes sense, but there also needs a body created that will be an evenly representational legislative institution – a bicameral system. Currently, there is the European parliament. This Lisbon Treaty will decrease the number of representatives and provide proportional representation. As I mentioned in the beginning, the EU follows a path similar to the US.

The United States had some states that wanted to have a proportional representation, while others, the smaller ones, wanted equal representation in the legislative body. The end result was the creation of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the US. The EU, most likely, will have the same waiting for it in the future.

The purpose of this article is to show how the EU is becoming increasingly like the United States in terms of it government’s organization. The structure looks more and more alike and this process seems to be a rule when countries or sovereign states pool together to create a single body. It will be interesting to see the effects of the Lisbon Treaty.

From what can be seen right now, it looks like the EU will be represented as a single union in the international arena. Maybe not in the UN, but as a single entity when conducting foreign policies with Russia, Ukraine, United States, and others. The Lisbon Treaty aims to bring more power to the EU Council. What will come of it? We’ll just have to wait and see. To have a probable picture – open the US history book and refresh your memory on the development of the US government.

Hamid Karzai has been in power for almost the entirety of America’s official involvement in Afghanistan. His rule is viewed as illegitimate by many of the Afghans. In addition, representation in Afghan cultures is different from the Western idea of a representative voting system. The Afghans entrust their elders to cast the village’s votes. The EU and US officials tend to view this as infringement upon the newly created and enforced electoral system in Afghanistan - thus the claims of overwhelming fraud and other such violations.

The current election process was bound not to go the way that it was supposed to. The Taliban are not going to sit on their butts and see their former area of rule desecrated by the villainous Westerners. It was to be expected that they were going to step up their operations in Afghanistan. There was most likely a sense of false safety inside Kabul. Also, taking into account Pakistan’s efforts in South Waziristan, some top officials may have thought that the main efforts of the Taliban would be concentrated on repelling the Pakistani Army. And yet, the Taliban have managed to deal heavy blows to the NATO presence and UN operations in Afghanistan.

Regardless of the candidate that wins the next election in Afghanistan, what will happen is that they will be the façade of US power in Afghanistan. As most Afghans do not view the current leadership as a central theme to be rallied around, the purpose of the governing body is lost. If the people do not have faith in the government, the government is only legitimate on paper. Well, it is radical to say that all Afghans oppose the leadership. On the contrary, the Afghans mainly oppose the fact that the leadership is led and manipulated by external governments.

Reading the recent news about the elections and the bombing in Afghanistan, it becomes ever more clear that the current US strategy of “democratizing” the Afghans is failing. It is not to say that that endeavor was destined for failure from the beginning. The strategy needs to implement the local governing traditions and customs. It is impossible to change a culture in a short amount of time. It is a lot easier to work with the flow than trying to redirect it in a completely different direction.

Why is this Israel’s main concern? That’s an easy question to answer. The Palestinians are born more often than Israeli Jews. The current article will not be about the reasons for disparity in birth rates, but about how Israel deals with this. It is mindboggling to see how low a civilized state is willing to go in order to push through an agenda that is racist and discriminating.

Amnesty International -- an organization that I, personally, do not particularly like --released a report recently that states that Israel restricts the flow of water resources to Palestine and other Muslim-dominated areas. Considering that Israel is located in an area where there is not much fresh water - it is essential to life.

Palestinians are part of Israel, currently. Yet the Israeli government discriminates by allocated this vital resource to the Jewish population and restricts its flow to the Arab areas. There is a minimum level of water that has to be consumed by a single person in order to survive. The Israeli government has calculated the rate of water that is to be allocated to designated areas in order to curb the birth rates and the standards of living. This is a particularly low blow that should definitely be investigated by international agencies. Under everyone’s noses, the people that themselves were discriminated against are enacting racist policies themselves.

The Israeli government is bringing in large numbers of Jews from around the world into the new settlements in the West Bank and other areas. Why is this relevant and how does this help? Of course, the most evident reason is that this pushes out the Arab population and confines them into an increasingly smaller area.

However, there is more to the settlements than that. The settlers are armed. They are not government officials and are “allowed” to settle disputes with the Arab neighbors in their own ways. The actions are simple – destroy the olive orchards, destroy the gardens, get the most water, etc. Numerous incidents have been reported by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), but no action has been taken on any level.

The Palestinians are left to fend for themselves. If the Palestinians arm themselves, they will be considered terrorists and radicals and prosecuted under Israeli law. The law looks the other way when the settlers, wielding weapons, move into the Palestinian area and push out the local population.

The last thing that I would like to mention is that Israel restricts deliveries of almost all medical supplies into Gaza and other areas. This is a story that I heard from an ISM volunteer. When the Israeli IDF moved into Gaza and began bombing the strip, ISM had a ship loaded with supplies coming out of Cyprus. The ship was loaded with medical supplies and volunteers.

The Cyprian government officials signed a document stating that the ship had been checked for weapons and that the there was nothing onboard that would be used to arm terrorists and support them in their cause. The ship was ordered to turn around when it entered Israeli waters. After refusing to do so, an Israeli ship actually got an order from the top officials to ram the ISM ship. The ship, after being severely damaged, had to turn around to go back to Cyprus.

To date, the Israeli government does not allow any organization to bring in large quantities of medical supplies and volunteers to any area such as the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, where primarily Arabs live. This is not to say that different organizations don’t use illegal means to smuggle in the necessary medical supplies, but when caught, everything gets confiscated without explanation or chance of getting back the supplies.

The purpose of this article is to bring attention to the violations and double standards of the Israeli government. The fact that a state that was created for those that have been brutally pursued and killed is behaving in a racist and indiscriminate fashion is simply unacceptable. Israeli soldiers go unpunished when they perform crimes against the civilian population in Gaza and the West Bank.

The Israeli government is afraid that the Arab population will get too large to be able to contain, and so the policies of Tel Aviv are becoming increasingly aimed at diminishing the quality of life of the Palestinians and other Arabs, in turn hoping to decrease birth rates and population numbers. The new settlements call on anyone that wants to live there that is not Muslim in order to push out the Arabs.

Anyone with even a slight hint of Jewish heritage is allowed to settle in the West Bank and other areas. I do not support the ways of terrorist organizations that fight Israel. I also do not support the racist and discriminate policies of Israel. Both sides need to peacefully sit down and talk. The current means of policy enforcement is not the way that differences are solved in a civilized world.