Power Grab: The EU Political Elites’ Fig Leaf of Legitimacy

By Richard Cantillon (writing for The Dollar Vigilante)
Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The EU political elites were beside themselves with self-congratulation on Friday as the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee announced that this year’s prize was awarded to the EU for its contributions to peace.

Yet a quick survey of historical facts since the end of WW2 reveals that the EU’s institutions, policies, and politicians had little or nothing to do with maintaining peace and security in Europe. Rather, what they did have was an immense impact on the steady growth of centralisation of political power in a set of supra-national unaccountable and anti-democratic institutions legalised in a succession of treaties between nation state governments; and a commensurate erosion and alienation of democratic powers within Europe’s nation states.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, Germany was occupied by the Allied and Russian armies. Both Germany’s and France’s economic infrastructures were devastated. Across the entire continent many were destitute and near starvation. No one was about to start another war. Economic reconstruction was kick-started in Germany by the US government’s Marshall Plan aid. No one in Europe had the capital or resources to mount such an effort.

Soon after, when the Russians decided that Eastern Europe was now their preserve, they determined to remain in Berlin. The Berlin Wall went up and the Cold War began. The US and USSR faced off across Europe threatening each other with nuclear arsenals. This military strategy, known as MAD (mutually assured destruction), was a contingent equilibrium that prevented war in Europe. All of Western Europe’s military and defence planning and operations were controlled by the US-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Although both Britain and France had their own “independent” nuclear deterrents, in truth, NATO was the sole arbiter of defence strategy in the European theatre. EU institutions had no say in NATO.

Around that time (late 1950s), the institutional and political emergence of today’s (so called) European Union was nothing more than the creation of the European Coal & Steel Community (ECSC), soon followed thereafter by the European Economic Community (EEC), commonly known as the “Common Market”. This was in reference to its focus on free trade and open markets between its six (France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg, West Germany, Italy ) member states. These new institutions had zero involvement in military, defence or security matters.

Fast forward to the late 1980s. The economies of Western Europe had recovered from the depredations of WW2, participating in the benefits of growth in world trade, productivity gains from technology innovations, and expanding domestic markets underpinned by growing population, increased labour participation rates and higher real incomes. All of which contributed to financing not only a growing “welfare state” sector in all the Western European nation states, but also a fast-inflating set of EU supranational institutions, encoded into EU law as the treaties of Maastricht (1979), Madrid (1985), and Lisbon (2005); and equally fast inflating budgets and spending.

The people of Europe were rarely allowed to vote any of these transfers of sovereign power from their own countries to the power elites controlling the EU. When they did exceptionally have referenda (France, Ireland) they voted against these power grabs; only for their political masters to force repeat referenda; effectively instructing them to “vote the right way”, and thereby reinforcing the growth of a dangerous Leviathan.

The lesson for all to learn from these predatory acts was that the writing was on the wall for nation state democracies in Europe. The creation of a United States of Europe against the consent of the people, was and is the overriding strategic goal of all those allied to the creation and strengthening of the EU. Which in practice means the overwhelming majority of the professional political class in ALL member countries (now 27 in number) of the EU.

However, for those with knowledge of the founding history of the EU, the unbridled truth of its power grabbing goals were revealed from its inception. The entire history of the EU’s development was conceived in the late 1940s by a group of European elite intellectuals, centred around Jean Monnet. Their mindset and intent was always anti-democratic, centralising, elitist, and statist. Their intent was captured in the EC’s founding treaty, the Treaty of Rome (1954), which clearly defined the aim as the “ever increasing integration” of the member states. The means to this end were also carefully established in the Treaty, by solely allocating the power of proposing legislation to the bureaucracy, that is, the European Commission. This extraordinarily anti-democratic design means that the European Parliament can only debate and vote laws and budgets presented by the Commission. Parliamentary deputies are mere voting fodder. By design, ALL legislation voted in the Parliament sets out to extend, deepen, consolidate and render irreversible the centralising, statist, anti democratic, integrationist and authoritarian rule of Europe’s diverse peoples and multifaceted economies.

The vast majority of Europe’s populations have sleepwalked into this nightmare; not realising the profound implications of the elites’ actions and the associated treaties. Which was fine for those EU elites and their power grab ambitions. Until that is, the euro crisis broke.

It is not economically possible to have a sound and sustainable monetary union without at the same time having fiscal union. Nation state democracies have that combination and it is legitimised through having a political union. The EU introduced monetary union in the 1990s without either fiscal or political union. This was done surreptitiously, irresponsibly but deliberately. Most discerning observers at the time knew that the design was flawed and would eventually create a crisis. The political elites at the time were informed. They chose to ignore the design weakness; arguably seeing it as an opportunity to hasten political union at a later date.

This is where we are today. The EU power elites see the eurozone crisis as a once in a lifetime opportunity to irreversibly close the door on nation states political autonomy. The President of the EU Commission, Barrosso, has called for the creation of both a banking union and a fiscal union. “More Europe” is the clarion call for solving the eurozone crisis.

So are the populations of Europe benefiting from peace and security bestowed from above? Are they contentedly basking in the well being and sense of European identity that the EU power elites claim is the legacy of their benign supranational rule?

Absolutely not. Tension, conflicts, civil unrest, violence, suicides, and demonstrations are the order of the day in many of Europe’s capitals. The people in the benighted southern European counties are voting with their hard earned savings. Billions of euros have already been shipped out of bank deposit accounts in Greece, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese banks and sent to safer havens in Germany and Switzerland. Governments in Greece and Italy have already been toppled by Brussels and external appointees imposed. The Spanish government is being threatened and cajoled to bow to an EU bailout; meaning, imposed constraints on its powers to tax and spend.

There are new political movements emerging with anti-centralising, anti EU agendas, in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Bavaria (southern Germany). The majority of British, Finns, and Czechs are now eurosceptic in outlook. Even in France one party – Marine Le Pen’s National Front – has at last broken ranks and openly adopted an anti euro, anti EU Fiscal Pact, policy platform. An immense power struggle for the heart and soul of Europe is beginning.

The EU power elites are resolved and united to win this struggle. At any cost. That means even to participate in the active destruction of liberty and free markets in Europe as well as the institutions and tax and spend powers of national democracies. They have invested their entire careers in this EU Project, the United States of Europe. The disastrous consequences of their policies, actions and powers are evident to all those who wish to see. Except, that is, the Nobel Peace Prize committee and the EU elites themselves. Hubris is their blindness but authoritarian power their drug. These people are dangerous and intent on taking away our freedoms.

Source: http://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2012/10/16/power-grab-the-eu-political-elites%E2%80%99-fig-leaf-of-legitimacy.html

Norway's Peace Prize a Farce

Nobel Peace Prize is officially a joke: European Union wins in 2012 
BEFORE IT'S NEWS - Saturday, October 13, 2012

The European Union was announced the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2012. A heated debate emerged over the validity of the award amidst the backdrop of Europe’s as-yet-unsolved economic crisis.

The 27-nation organization was awarded the prize for its role in “uniting the continent,” and its contributions “to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.”

The unanimous decision was made by a five-person panel chaired by Thorbjoern Jagland, the Council of Europe’s Secretary-General and a strong advocate of the EU in Norway. “The EU helped transform Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace,” Jagland said.

The EU will receive a $1.2 million award on December 10 by the Nobel Committee.

The news came 60 years after the creation of the EU’s predecessor organization, the European Coal and Steel Community, which helped rebuild a continent decimated by two World Wars.

“The European Union is in the middle of one of its worst crises, but perhaps it is precisely now the peace and stabilization project deserves a hand from the ‘no’ country Norway?” Norwegian public broadcaster NRK said.

Norway, the Nobel Peace Prize’s host nation, refused membership in the EU in 1972 and again in 1994.

The last organization to be granted a Nobel Peace Prize was French charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), 13 years ago.

Storm of debate erupts over EU peace prize win

The EU enthusiastically welcomed the announcement, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel calling the decision “wonderful,” and vowing to press for closer integration in the EU. ”The fact that the Nobel Committee has honored this idea is both a spur and an obligation, also for me in a very personal way,” she told reporters.

Martin Schulz, president of the EU Parliament said he was “deeply touched and honored” by the prize. “The EU is a unique project that replaced war with peace, hate with solidarity.”

“Overwhelming emotion for awarding of Nobel Prize to EU,” he wrote on his twitter account.

 The news also sparked debate and criticism in the EU and elsewhere. Nigel Farage, head of Britain’s euro-skeptic UK Independence Party said the move was “an absolute disgrace. I think it brings the Nobel Prize into total disrepute,” the AP reported.

The leader of Norway’s main anti-EU organization, Heming Olaussen, described the prize as “absurd” in an interview with NRK.

 RT’s Max Keiser expressed outrage, describing the Nobel Peace Prize as being given to “a technocratic monstrosity.”

“This is like giving the prize to Frankenstein for being the best monster created during the past 12 months,” Keiser said.“Who are they going to give it to next? They are going to give it to a genetically modified seed in India where farmers are killing themselves by the thousands because of companies like Monsanto. Give it to Monsanto next year, Nobel Committee!”

International investor and author James Rogers told RT that the EU may have gotten the prize for bringing nations together, but could still fall apart.

 “I assure you, next week or next month, when people are out rioting in the streets again in parts of Europe, they are not going to care about the Nobel Peace Prize,” Rogers said. “Europe has been spending money they don’t have. That’s going to have to stop, and it’s going to cause more riots in the streets, more social unrest, more governments failing and perhaps even countries failing, and perhaps even people pulling out of the euro.”

 Several Russian officials and human rights activists also expressed confusion over the decision.

In 2009, the Nobel Committee raised eyebrows and sparked similar debate for awarding the Peace Prize to newly inaugurated US President Barack Obama. President Obama had only been in office for two weeks, but was awarded the prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

This is not to mention controversial 1973 Peace Prize for Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State and US National Security Advisor, who was implicated in war crimes in Latin America and Southeastern Asia.



Source: http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/10/nobel-peace-prize-is-officially-a-joke-european-union-wins-in-2012-2479312.html

Virtual 911 - Israel to crash the US banking system and blame Iran?

Another video by Michael Rivero. 

From the Whatreallyhappened.com website, written by Mike Rivero: "VIRTUAL 9-11: Will Israel Hack The US Banking System Computers and Falsely Blame It On Iran?"

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/virtual9-11.php 

The MADNESS of the Ruling Elite & End of the Petrodollar

Mike Rivero - PART ONE

Mike Rivero - PART TWO
SGTreport talks with Mike Rivero of: whatreallyhappened.com

SGTreport brings you this in-depth interview with radio show host Mike Rivero, founder of WhatReallyHappened.com. As a 20-year veteran of the truth movement, Mike gives us his expert perspective on the Madness of the ruling "Elite" and the death of the Petrodollar. [Parts 1 & 2]

My comment: 
Politicians, bureaucrats, and bankers are the same throughout the Western World as they are in the US as is shown in these two YouTube videos. They do not want to lose their power, but if their elitist monetary systems implode that is what will happen to them, if not worse. They will and are reacting ruthlessly and relentlessly to avoid this. One should note, however, that insanity is defined as repeating the same action but expecting a different result. So the US Federal Reserve conducted QE1 (quantitative easing), then QE2, then Operation Twist and now is set for QE3. It expects a different result from the rising costs and debasement of the currencies. Somehow by enlisting the cooperation of the Euro Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, and the Swiss National Bank they think they can pull off QE3 in a veritable ongoing QE to Infinity when all previous efforts have failed to produce a solution or economic recovery. The central planers, sorry central bankers are in a quandary and it is beginning to show. Their solutions solve nothing. If they continue to follow this course what they will finally achieve is at best to rule over the ruins of a destroyed world.

Germany Tip-Toes Toward a Euro Exit

The stock market will not remain in its current tranquil state. Investors will soon be roused from their blissful trance.

This trance traces its origins back to the mass self-delusion that central banks can revitalize multi-trillion-dollar economies, simply by prodding investors into stocks and other “risk assets.” Investing is not that simple. The comparison between bond yields and stock yields — two completely different investments — has become absurd.

Bonds are contracts involving a fixed stream of cash flows and a predetermined maturity date. Stocks are claims on highly uncertain streams of future free cash flows that often stretch out for decades. Many risks can enter the picture and alter the trajectory of free cash flow — and investors’ expectations of them.

Risks tend to appear out of the blue and smack investors out of their blissful trance — a trance created by central banks that have shifted far too much attention on the returns of stocks versus bonds...

Here is just one negative catalyst growing closer as the weeks and months pass: Germany could exit from the euro and return to the deutsche mark. While a German exit would offer long-awaited clarity about the future of Europe, it would also spark a mad scramble to adjust to a new reality.

A German exit would trash the euro’s value against the currency that’s steadily becoming the reserve of choice: gold. Only weak economies with bankrupt governments would be left standing behind the euro. The European Central Bank (ECB) would be free to monetize as much Italian and Spanish debt as it wished (i.e., print euros to buy the government bonds of Italy and Spain). The economists calling for a weaker currency to restore prosperity to the PIIGS countries would get to see their prescription play out in a real-world laboratory. Results would show that currency debasement does not create stronger, more competitive economies. Countries left in the euro would see collapsing living standards: import prices would rise and capital investment would fall amid a chaotic currency regime.

ECB president Mario Draghi famously deemed the euro “irreversible”; he would do whatever is necessary to preserve it. But what Draghi sees as necessary will eventually be seen as intolerable in creditor countries like Germany. Once Draghi starts monetizing Spanish debt, Germany and other wealthy countries will view the euro’s costs as greater than its benefits.

The German central bank — the Bundesbank — still exists. The Bundesbank could convert its liabilities from euros to deutsche marks at a predetermined exchange rate and take a one-time write- down on assets related to claims on PIIGS central banks. It would certainly be costly, but the alternative is worse: perpetually financing eurozone states unwilling to restructure public benefit programs unaffordable for their economies.

Having seen the example of Greece, the Spanish public suspects that austerity will only make things worse. Spain will come to believe that its salvation lies in the printing press — in the ability to inflate away its heavy debt burden. After promising markets that the ECB would buy Spanish debt, Mario Draghi now has no choice but to fire up the euro printing press.

Most other debt holders will flee the chaos unfolding in Spain. They’ll refuse to hold Spanish bonds at yields too low to compensate for default risk. The ECB, once it establishes a fake, above-market price for Spanish bonds, will ultimately find itself the only holder of those bonds. This is what happens when central planners impose prices far from what private investors consider fair value (in this case, pushing Spanish debt yields to below 4%, versus a much higher market-based yield). Once the German taxpayers see that the ECB will become the majority holder of Spanish debt, they will insist that German politicians plan an exit from the euro.

The next act in this long-running tragedy involves Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy officially requesting a bailout from the EU. Rajoy’s bailout-stalling is only a negotiating tactic to get the easiest terms possible. His so-called “austerity” budget, released this week, shows that he’s still far from the demands of EU bailout bureaucrats. For example, Rajoy’s budget ignored the EU suggestion that Spain raise the official retirement age for pensions.

Once the negotiations end, the bailout will commence. The ECB will sprinkle its fairy dust and enter a Spanish bond market that others are fleeing. The investors who are dumping Spanish bonds know that Spain’s experience will resemble Greece’s experience: a series of EU bailout checks, failed austerity programs and probably steep haircuts for bondholders. That’s why the folks who are still holding Spanish bonds will be happy for the ECB to take them out of their positions with newly printed euros.

Rajoy’s budget cuts will not be enough. Spain can’t afford to fiddle around the edges. It needs a financial restructuring focused on the zombie banks. The banks still haven’t come close to admitting their real capital shortfalls. Until there is a restructuring, with substantial haircuts for bank shareholders and bondholders, projections of economic recovery are pure fantasy.

Even if proposed budget cuts satisfy Germany and the EU, there is no political will for austerity in Spain. That much is clear from the rising energy of protests in the streets of Madrid. Protests against budget cuts have only just begun. Debilitating strikes are on the way.

We may even see the wealthy northeastern region of Catalonia vote to sever financial ties to the national government. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard summarizes Spain’s fragile political cohesion in a recent UK Telegraph column:

“I have no idea what Spain will do, but emotions are running high and the country — in the words of Confidencial this morning — risks 'disintegrating.’ We watch and wait to see whether the Basque revolt or the Catalan revolt will detonate first, and whether the Spanish will really use ‘all means’ to hold the union together. 

 “The newspapers ABC and La Razon both called on the government to deploy ‘the arms of the state’ to stop Catalonia holding an independence referendum. 

“It is as if The Daily Telegraph were to call for coercion to stop Scottish independence. Imagine the response in Scotland.” 

Do you think many investors would hold Spanish bonds while whole regions were threatening to secede, fighting a central government that might morph into a military dictatorship? Or that in this scenario Germany would tolerate staying in a euro collateralized by Spanish bonds? I don’t think so.

Germany will watch as all of this unfolds and realize that Spain’s austerity promises will be broken. The ECB will be left holding hundreds of billions of Spanish debt, with no possible exit and constant pressure to continue monetizing Spanish debt. It will be then that the drive to exit the euro will pick up speed.

Enjoy the blissful trance while you can; it is about to come to an end.

Dan Amoss
for The Daily Reckoning

European Action responds in their recent ROAD MAP

ROAD MAP No. 4

AUTUMN 2012

Liechtenstein is a prime example
We have always dedicated ourselves in our Road Maps to the fundamental questions of political work. This time we will present an example of a successful campaign, which was based on strict adherence to tactical considerations. In recent months the EA National Group of the Principality of Liechtenstein under its intelligent and energetic National Leader demonstrated how, in individual tactical steps, a major strategic interim target can be achieved. By means of various country-wide campaigns the task was to grab the attention of the media by concentrating on a predetermined area - as homogeneous as possible - and over a fairly long period of time, thereby breaking the spiral of silence.

We base our precept on the assumption that bad news is also news. Thus, we have put the current unjust regime in a dilemma since, if the media stay silent regarding our information campaigns, they are indirectly admitting we are right. The public have read our flyers, our posters and banners, they have seen our golden Cross of Europe on stickers and balloons, on our website they have looked at the texts, films and lectures and in so doing have had the opportunity to form their own opinions at their leisure. And in many cases that is positive. If, however, the media begin to drool - as is now the case in Liechtenstein - many more people unavoidably become aware of us. And right now that is the main thing. The people must get to know: EUROPEAN ACTION is there, and it has very specific objectives.

The fact that the media are now hopping mad, because a certain Member of the Liechtensteiner Landtag, a typical do-gooder, who continuously repeats the same boring rhetoric, reels off antifascist litanies and then calls the police, is something that doesn’t greatly bother us. We are much more interested in the fact that the Liechtenstein public prosecutor's office has once again confirmed its official position that there is nothing legally wrong with our activities. At this stage in our political struggle this is critical: we have no interest that our activities are prohibited or that our fellow campaigners are brought to court. We operate very close to the limits, but we try as far as possible to avoid major losses, which serve no useful purpose.

If one day in the future the ruling political structure in Europe throws all its hypocritical liberal principles overboard and segues into an open dictatorship, tougher laws will naturally be adopted, which could to some degree make our 7 objectives illegal. In that case we would have to respond with an appropriate change in strategy.

Meanwhile, however, the precedent set by Liechtenstein should be adopted. With diverse, even unconventional campaigns – required is only that they have style and class – the objective is that attention is drawn towards the EA and with maximum energy ensure that the deathly silence is broken and that the taboos crumble away.

A wave of sympathy in the general population for EA cannot be restrained any longer as soon as the censorship and pent up fear are first broken. The clearer the crisis heading in our direction becomes, the sooner people will be looking for alternatives which we can provide them with. Initially consent is covert, or at least restrained, but at some point it will be more open. Therefore, it is necessary in a specific geographical area - or at a university, a cultural, economic or political meeting of any kind - to reach a larger number of interested parties through multiple and diverse actions, so that inevitably conversations ensues thereby breaking the spell.

The Principality of Liechtenstein has 17,000 households. After the recent media storm in three days 7,000 users from Liechtenstein visited our webpage www.europaeische aktion.org.

That is what we understand as successful work!
Our congratulations to Liechtenstein!

Bernhard Schaub
September 2012