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• WayneMadsenReport "The London luncheon for McCain will place the GOP candidate amid the very same syndicates that have tainted and infiltrated the Bush-Cheney administration. Lord Rothschild lords over a number of European companies and entities, including the umbrella RIT, Ltd. (formerly Rothschild Investment Trust), which is invested in Lukoil, The Economist, Atticus International, Royal Dutch Shell, and Getty Images. The Rothschild Foundation built the Israeli Knesset building and the Israeli Supreme Court, the latter known for its unique design of a pyramid with an eye atop of it that juts through its roof.  Lord Rothschild also received the shares in the Yukos oil company of jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, shortly before his arrest for tax evasion. Rothschild is close to wanted Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, Henry Kissinger, and Rupert Murdoch.  The Rothschild connection to EADS, as reported by The Independent (UK), is through Diligence, a business intelligence firm chaired by former Conservative Party leader Michael Howard and founded in 2000 by ex-MI5 and Special Boat Service agent Nick Day and former CIA agent Mike Baker. Former Senior Bush chief arms control negotiator and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Burt was also a major force in the formation of Diligence. A Nathaniel Rothschild investment firm called JNR was reported by The Independent on February 18, 2007, to be involved in acquiring a stake in Diligence from a South American private equity firm. Diligence also attracted investments from the Republican lobbying firm Barbour [Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour], Griffith & Rogers. Diligence counts former CIA and FBI director William Webster and Carlyle Group managing director Edward Mathias among its advisory board members, along with Howard. Last, but not least, Diligence's clients have included Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old firm.  The link between Diligence and EADS is through Burt, who, in addition to being a major player in Diligence, is a member of EADS North America's Board of Directors, an international director of Barbour, Griffiths & Rogers, and an adviser to the Carlyle Group. The Chairman of EADS North America's Board is Ralph Crosby, Jr., former President of the Integrated Systems Sector of Northrop Grumman, EADS's tanker contractor partner. Significantly, another EADS North America board member is retired Admiral T. Joseph Lopez, a close confidante of Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense, later the Commander Naval Forces Europe/Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces Southern Europe, and then appointed by Cheney, after his retirement, to be Senior Vice President and Global Director of U.S. and Foreign Government Operations for Kellogg Brown & Root, the division of the Halliburton.  The McCain-EADS-Diligence-Rothschild connections have taken advantage of the emaciation of the 1933 Buy America Act, designed by President Herbert Hoover to force the federal government to buy from American firms to help propel the country out of the depths of the Great Depression. McCain and his foreign cronies have facilitated federal contracts with foreign firms to replenish McCain's campaign coffers. Currently, 45 countries are exempt from the Buy American Act. They include France (home of Airbus), the United Kingdom (base for McCain's Rothschild friends), Israel, Singapore, Italy, Belgium, Japan, Aruba, Switzerland, Sweden, Egypt, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia, Ireland, Estonia, and the Czech Republic." full story

The greenback's recent volatility and the yawning US trade deficit, "are definitely causing concern with regard to its reserve currency status," he said. "The international community can hardly be satisfied with this instability."  Kudrin's intervention coincided with another meeting, also in Washington, of finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven - which doesn't include Russia.

Top of the agenda: the effect of ever-rising oil prices on inflation and interest rates.  G7 countries are worried the spiraling price of crude - which closed at $72.79 a barrel on Friday and which has now trebled in three years - could inflict real economic damage. The US Federal Reserve, in particular, has been forced to take drastic action - raising interest rates 15 times since June 2004 to keep inflation in check.

Given that fragility, it is significant that Kudrin is now wondering aloud if the long-standing dollar hegemony can last. For him to do so is to highlight that America is vulnerable should that status be lost. That's because Russia, with its awesome oil and gas reserves, could kick-start a challenge to the dollar's supremacy.  Most nations stockpile their foreign exchange holdings in dollars. The US currency accounts for more than two thirds of all central bank reserves worldwide.

This reserve status means that the dollar is constantly in demand, whatever the underlying strength of the US economy.  And now, with massive trade and budget deficits to finance, America is increasingly reliant on that status. The unprecedented weight of US liabilities means a threat to the dollar's dominance could result in a currency collapse, plunging the world's largest economy into recession.

That won't happen immediately. The dollar has sat astride the globe for some time now - in fact, for most of the last century. But this statement from Russia - a country of growing financial and strategic significance - still caused the dollar to slide. It also fuelled speculation that central banks could increasingly diversify their holdings away from dollars.

Kudrin's statement followed news that Sweden has cut its dollar holdings, from 37 per cent of central bank reserves to 20 per cent, with the euro's share rising to 50 per cent. Central banks in some Gulf states have also lately mooted a shift into the euro. Such sentiments helped push the dollar to a seven-month low against the single currency last week.  But Russia's intervention will have raised eyebrows in Washington because the backbone of the dollar's reserve currency status - the main guarantee that status continues -is the fact that oil is traded in dollars. And that is something the likes of Kudrin can directly affect.

For historic reasons, the dollar remains the world's "petrocurrency" - the only currency for the settlement of oil contracts on world markets. That makes the EU and Russia dependent on it. But with central banks switching to euros, the logical next step would be for fuel-exporting countries to start quoting oil prices in euros too.  The EU is Russia's main trading partner. More than two thirds of Russia's oil and gas is exported to the EU. That makes Russia a strong candidate to become the first major oil exporter to start trading in euros. Such a scenario, in recent years, has become theoretically possible. But now, with these latest comments, Kudrin has thrust that possibility into the open.

The G7 meeting was dominated, of course, by concern over Iran's nuclear programme. The threat of military action against Iran, itself a major crude exporter, is one reason oil prices are now testing record highs.  It is worth noting that Tehran has ongoing plans to set up an oil trading exchange to compete with New York's NYMEX and with London's International Petroleum Exchange. In the light of Kudrin's comments, it is significant that the Iranians want to run their oil bourse in euros, not dollars.  Were the Iranians to establish a Middle-East based euro-only oil exchange, the dollar's unique petrocurrency status could unravel. That, in turn, would threaten its broader dominance - which, given America's groaning twin deficit, could seriously hurt the US economy.

Some cite this as the real reason the US wants to attack Iran: to protect the dollar's unique position. I wouldn't go that far, but the prospect of a non-dollar oil exchange in Tehran is certainly an aggravating factor.  The opening of Iran's new oil exchange has recently been delayed. But, having spoken with numerous officials in Tehran, and western consultants who've been working with the Iranians for several years, I think it will go ahead. The exchange entity has already been legally incorporated in Iran and a site purchased to house administrative and regulatory staff.

The reality is that as long as most of Opec's oil - read Saudi Arabia - is priced in dollars, the US currency will retain its hegemony. But the opening of an oil bourse in Tehran, which now looks likely, will signal at least tacit Saudi consent for euro-based oil trading. The US knows this, which is why it is nervous about the dollar's status being questioned.  From the G7's fringe, Kudrin has now touched this raw nerve. This weekend's meetings have been dominated by questions of global financial imbalance - in particular, America's huge deficits.

Kudrin's missive comes as central bankers, and currency dealers, start to conclude the only way to resolve the massive US external deficit is a somewhat weaker US currency. As the IMF itself warned yesterday, a "substantial" dollar decline may be needed.  One way to bring that about would be for the euro to enter the global oil trading system. This is unlikely to happen soon. It might not happen at all. But the idea is now not only realistic but firmly on the table in Washington. Perhaps not with love, but it was placed there by the Russians.

Liam Halligan is Economics Correspondent at Channel 4 News

by an internet researcher

French filmmaker Mathieu Verboud is set to release a new documentary for European television this fall, which will reveal important new insights into the case of former FBI translator and president of the National Security Whistleblower’s Coalition Sibel Edmonds.  Edmonds, a Turkish-American whose wrongful termination lawsuit was suppressed by the government’s invocation of the all-too-common “state secrets privilege”, reported to her superiors espionage and deliberate mistranslations on the part of fellow Turkish translator, Melek Can Dickerson.   It seems Ms. Dickerson had relationships with targets of FBI investigation working at the Turkish Embassy and the American Turkish Council, a fact which meant that anything she translated was likely to be false.  However, instead of receiving a promotion for bringing Ms. Dickerson’s’ espionage to the attention of her bosses, Edmonds was fired after she went in frustration to the U.S. Senate.  The FBI refused to investigate Edmonds’ claims, at least in part, because the contract linguist had discovered quite a messy scandal: the content of the mistranslated documents revealed that some very powerful people in the U.S. government, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, were connected to foreign organized crime.  Even worse, these foreign criminals connected to the high and mighty in the U.S. were also connected internationally, through the heroin trade and associated money laundering, to international terrorist organizations like al Qaeda. 

Okay, take a deep breath and take a step back: it’s not a pretty picture.  According to what we know so far from Sibel Edmonds’ many interviews and from the groundbreaking story on her case from Vanity Fair, “An Inconvenient Patriot” , Edmonds found that within the U.S. a nest of Turkish spies, some working at the Turkish embassy, others affiliated with namely the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA), the American Turkish Associations (ATA) and the American Turkish Council (ATC), were involved in espionage, bribery, illegal lobbying, drug trafficking and the infiltration of U.S nuclear research labs.  Separately, from a former CIA Counterterrorism official, Phillip Giraldi, who himself was once based in Turkey, we know that some arms sales meant for Turkey and Israel were actually meant for resale to countries like China and India- and perhaps even to international terrorists- using fake end-user certificates.  So we have Turkish nationals at the Embassy and NGOs stealing U.S. secrets for sale to the highest bidder, re-selling arms meant for Turkey, bringing in drugs from Europe, and pouring money into bribes and lobbying activities. 

To understand how these activities fit together- Americans must first understand what Europeans call the Turkish ‘deep state’.  In 1996, a car crash in a town called Susurluk revealed “link between politics, organized crime and the bureaucracy” in Turkey.  As it turns out, its crippled economy in the 1990s meant Turkey had become the European equivalent of Colombia- a state almost completely dependent on the Turkish mafia and by extension, the Southwest Asian Heroin trade.  Which is where the Turkish ‘deep state’ comes in- it becomes very difficult to determine where the ‘government’ ends and the ‘mafia’ begins.  What we do know from Sibel Edmonds and other sources is this: Turkey’s secular establishment, including the Turkish military and intelligence services (MIT), as well as political parties associated with former Prime Minister Tansu Ciller, appear to have been more connected to the Turkish mafia than the Turkish Islamic Parties that Washington abhors.  Furthermore, it appears from reading into some of Edmonds’ statements that the Turkish mafia was partnered with Osama Bin Laden’s al Qaeda network in the drug trade- meaning Turkey’s secular establishment was more connected to al Qaeda- pre/9-11- than were the Islamists in Turkey.  Which is quite ironic, to say the least. 

If you think this story sounds too convoluted to be true, and you feel the instinct to dismiss Edmonds’ claims, think again.  Every investigation into the whistleblower’s charges- from the Senate Judiciary Committee to the Department of Justice’s Inspector General Report, has found that Edmonds’ story is corroborated within the FBI, which means her translations, not those of Melek Can Dickerson, were the correct ones.  This also means that the aforementioned Turkish organizations, and certain Turkish diplomats, were indeed under FBI investigation.  And all this put together means that people like Dennis Hastert probably were- and perhaps still are- on the payroll of Turkish ‘deep state’ interests.

A recent article published in the U.K. Guardian about the well-connected Kurdish Baybasin clan also gives important backing to the former translator’s story.  The article details how Europe’s “Pablo Escobar”, Huseyin Baybasin, has “alleged that he had received the assistance of Turkish embassies and consulates while moving huge consignments of drugs around Europe, and that Turkish army officers serving with NATO in Belgium were also involved." This information, of course, dovetails most precisely with what Sibel Edmonds has been hinting at for over 3 years now; that targets of FBI investigations linked with the Turkish embassy and Turkish organizations were involved in narcotics trafficking.  It is clear the Baybasin gang and the secular factions in Turkey had a seemingly symbiotic relationship, with the government providing the traffickers diplomatic passports and thus free reign to travel around the world without fear of prosecution.  Also involved in the scandalous Turkish drug running are the very notorious, Pope-killing Grey Wolves, a fascist organization connected to human rights abuses in Turkey.

As for who else besides Hastert might have been on the payroll of Mr. Baybasin and friends- we turn next to the Executive Branch.  In an interview with Chris Deliso of antiwar.com, Edmonds hinted at key roles played by some powerful unelected officials-important Neoconservatives like Marc Grossman of the State Department, and Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, formerly of the Defense Department.   If we hit the rewind button and go back to a CBS 60 Minutes’ interview in October, 2002, we remember the ex-contract linguist stated that Turkish targets of FBI investigation had spies inside the U.S. State Department and at the Pentagon in order to “obtain the United States military and intelligence secrets.”   It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that Grossman, Feith and Perle might have been the persons to whom she was referring in 2002.  Furthermore, the language specialist has repeatedly stated in past interviews that investigations into pre-9/11 terrorist financing activities were blocked “per State Department request”, leaving open the question whether it was Mr. Grossman, then Undersecretary of State for European Affairs, who actively hindered investigations into the Turkey-Bin Laden link. 

Perle and Feith are an interesting case in this hidden scandal.   Their consultancy, International Advisors (IA), has done extensive work for the Republic of Turkey, though it is questionable who is paying the invoices.  Ms. Edmonds rhetorically asked the question of Phoenix radio personality Charles Goyette in January 2006, “For what [were they paid]?  One could imagine, hypothetically, that passing state secrets might be one “service” provided to the Turkish mafia/government by IA.  But would Perle and Feith have gone beyond that?  Would they have introduced the Turkish mafia types to Denny Hastert, and counseled “deep state” interests in how to skirt U.S. campaign finance laws?  After all, the Turks were reported to have made their initial payments from 1996-1998 through “unitemized (less than $200) contributions”, after which they allegedly delivered suitcases of cash to the Speaker’s front door.  Someone had to teach them the intricacies of campaign finance law: was it IA?  What we do know is that Perle was a key architect of the Israeli/Turkish alliance forged in the late 90s, and that Edmonds case also is connected to the AIPAC spy scandal- leaving lots of room for speculation on how the rest of the story pans out.

As messy and ugly as this, for lack of a better phrase, “Turkish DeepState Gate” scandal appears, the consequences of continuing to do nothing about it- of allowing the government’s outrageous use of ‘state secrets’ to insure Dennis Hastert, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Marc Grossman and others are never investigated, could be horrific.  Ms. Edmonds plans to take petitions to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming months to finally force full and open hearings on her case.  She will try to do the type of lobbying that does not involve foreign bribery or ill-gotten gains.  This will be the simple type of petitioning guaranteed of every citizen in the Constitution under the First Amendment, a long forgotten portion of the Bill of Rights.  Americans aware of the situation can only hope, and do everything in their power to insure, that Ms. Edmonds’ type of lobbying prevails. 

Aug 19: buzz: likely to propel re-examination of the Iraq War into the headlines, for fall presidential campaign, Hadley encouraged participation, interviews with Bush, Cheney, Rice, Gates, ... publisher: Simon & Schuster, Amazon, Alice Mayhew, and see CBS, Viacom, 496 pages, 900,000, red, white, blue, gold cover, administration infighting, will be best seller, he'll be on 60 minutes, Sept 7, How does Woodward, Miller, Cheney, Libby fit with declassifying classified information to hype the war?.. Woodward was leaked Plame info in June 03, but sat on it for years, ... John Bolton, Marc Grossman are the neo-con links to Turkey, and Plame / Edmonds working on uncovering WMD proliferation, black market activities of Bushco.

Seymour Hersh, on Chain of Command  NYTimes  "We now have two major accounts of the road to war in Iraq, Hersh's ''Chain of Command'' and Bob Woodward's ''Plan of Attack.'' Hersh is the anti-Woodward. Woodward is official scribe to the inner sanctum, and his access -- to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell -- gives his account real authority, but at a price. In Woodward's world, everything is what the principals say it is. In Hersh's world, by contrast, nothing the policy elites say is true actually is.

SourceWatch  Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus is "the top American military commander in Iraq, part of a broad revamping of the military team that will carry out the administration's new Iraq 'surge' strategy." [1][2] Petraeus replaced Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., who was confirmed February 6, 2007, by the U.S. Senate, as Army Chief of Staff.   ...   Petraeus, who has "served two previous tours in Iraq", "sees the need for additional troops in Baghdad." He "helped oversee the drafting of the military’s comprehensive new" Counterinsurgency Field Manual published December 2006. [3]   ...   On September 8, 2005, Lt. Gen. Petraeus left Iraq "after handing off command" of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, which he had commanded for 15 months. [4] He most recently served as Commander of the U.S. Army Combine Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. [5]

New York Sun Aug 26  ".... speculation is surging that it will portray the latest phase of the war in Iraq as a success, credited to the recently departed commander of forces there, General David Petraeus.   ...    one source familiar with an early draft said Mr. Woodward had extensive access to General Petraeus and his deputies, known in the military as the "Jedi Council." Mr. Woodward also interviewed the head of the Anbar Awakening, Sheik Ahmad al-Rishawi, who took over the Sunni Arab uprising against Al Qaeda in Iraq after his brother was assassinated last September."

Examiner "Woodward is also known for his Pulitzer Prize -winning reporting with fellow Washington Post writer Carl Bernstein . In the 1970s, they collaborated on the groundbreaking stories of the Watergate scandal that helped bring down  Richard Nixon and on two best sellers about the Nixon administration, "All the President's Men" and "The Final Days."  he can pry the facts from the most unlikely sources.

• Global Research  The New US Sponsored Gladio: Sword Play: Attacking Civilians to Justify "Greater Security" by Chris Floyd and 
• Global Research
• GNN Rasputin
• Indymedia, Houston, 
• LoneStarIcon The Real Drill, false flag operations, war, Cheney.
• MediaMonarchy
• NoWorldSystem
• Probe Magazine, 
• RedIceCreations  
• Rogue Government 
• 911  Timewatch Gladio
• Wayne Madsen Report
• Notes: Francesco Cossiga, said 911 attacks were run by the CIA and Mossad and that this was common knowledge amongst global intelligence agency.
• Kobi Alexander,  owners / developers, Odigo software, allows Israelis to communicate instantly on 9/11.  "buddy system" communicate to a large group of people that share a trait, Hebrew language,  thousands of Israelis warned,  9/11.

• Aviation Nation, Houston, Continental Flight 1544, Boeing 737,  rocket-like object nearly missing the aircraft on take-off, George Bush International Airport, departing passengers saw the object, trail of smoke, flaming tail, ...  model rocketing spin not passing the smell test, FBI / FAA investigating, including Doug Hagman, Northeast Intelligence Network, and FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, no hobby clubs granted clearance, pilots reported seeing the object zoom past their cockpit window,  
• Gibson, Professor Donald, de-classified telephone transcripts form early Lyndon Johnson presidency, Warren Commission cover-up, Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK x-rays are forgeries, MLK killed by US government, journalist stories cleared with CIA, propaganda assets, Malcolm X, 
• Guardian
• History Matters, JFK, Cuba, drug traffic, CIA.
• Hubritic Anamoly
• StartNow72 Karnabe Carnaby
• Wikipedia, Leonard Peltier
• Wikipedia Pine Ridge Reservation, 1973, 
• WilliamBowles Gladio
• Wikipedia Francesco Cossiga, revealed the existence of Operation Gladio, elected President of the Italian Senate, 1983, and President of Italy, 1985. 
• notes: Cossiga  revealed that Operation Gladio under NATO carried out bombings across Europe in the 60s 70s and 80s. ... false flag attacks ... by Gladio blamed on their domestic and geopolitical opposition.  ... Gladio used right wing extremists who committed acts of terrorism and espionage, then blamed on left wing or Communist groups.   joint resolution (EP 22.11.90) of the European Parliament condemns actions of US and allied intelligence agencies involved

• video
• Ron Paul names neocons video
• ------------------------------------------
• Berlesconi
• Chronicle, Houston, flight 1544
• CIA
• FBI
• German Intelligence service, NPD 
• Gladio players:Michael Ledeen, Iran/Contra figure Gen. John Singlaub, CIA Director William Colby and Ray Cline, 
• Israel, Zionist, 
• Ledeen, Michael
• Neo-Nazis,  paid by German Intelligence services
• RonPaul2008
• USInfo, disinformation, Gladio, 30-31B
• Veterans for Freedom 527 attack ads. Swiftboat

• Operation Gladio, stay-behind network, Wikipedia terms: Italy, NATO, Christian Democrats, counter Warsaw pact,  CCWU, SHAPE, years of lead, paramilitary, ODESSA ratlines, Rheinhard Gehlen, MSI, internal subversion, Allen Dulles, CIA financing, founded by Aldo Moro, SDRA8, TD BJD, LOK, I&O, ROC, Aginter, P26, AGAG, OWSGV, P2, false flag operations, strategy of tension, carried out Operation Condor, DINA, Ezeiza massacre, Montejurra massacre, Taksim Square massacre, collapse of the Soviet Union, ... Order of the Solar Temple, 
• 911 Review "This was the essence of Operation Gladio, a decades-long covert campaign of terrorism and deceit directed by the intelligence services of the West -- against their own populations. Hundreds of innocent people were killed or maimed in terrorist attacks -- on train stations, supermarkets, cafes and offices -- which were then blamed on "leftist subversives" or other political opponents. The purpose, as stated above in sworn testimony by Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra, was to demonize designated enemies and frighten the public into supporting ever-increasing powers for government leaders -- and their elitist cronies. ... First revealed by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in 1991, Gladio (from the Latin for "sword") is still protected to this day by its founding patrons, the CIA and MI6. Yet parliamentary investigations in Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have shaken out a few fragments of the truth over the years. These have been gathered in a new book, "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe," by Daniele Ganser, as Lila Rajiva reports on CommonDreams.org. ... Originally set up as a network of clandestine cells to be activated behind the lines in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, Gladio quickly expanded into a tool for political repression and manipulation, directed by NATO and Washington. Using right-wing militias, underworld figures, government provocateurs and secret military units, Gladio not only carried out widespread terrorism, assassinations and electoral subversion in democratic states such as Italy, France and West Germany, but also bolstered fascist tyrannies in Spain and Portugal, abetted the military coup in Greece and aided Turkey's repression of the Kurds."
• Wayne Madsen Report "As a member of the West German Bundestag, Gedat brought about the cancellation at the Cannes Film Festival of the showing of a movie about a family of Jewish refugees from Prague during the Nazi regime. At the same time, Gedat was one of three of Vereide’s International Council for Christian Leadership (ICCL) representatives in Europe. The other two were also Nazis, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (married to Queen Juliana) and German Prince Max von Hohenlohe. The latter served under SS head Walter Schellenberg and, according to SS documents captured by the Soviets, Hohenlohe engaged in direct negotiations during the war with Allen Dulles of the OSS. Like Vereide and Buchman, Dulles was a strong anti-Semite who saw Communism and Jews through the same lens. Through the OSS’s and CIA’s "Rat Line" program, such infamous Nazis as Klaus Barbie (the "Butcher of Lyon"), Nazi "mad scientist" and butcher Dr. Joseph Mengele, concentration camp vaccine "tester" Kurt Blome, and SS Commander Adolf Eichmann, escaped from Europe to South America with the assistance of Opus Dei collaborators in the Vatican. These same Nazis were used to establish terror cells throughout Western Europe (the "Gladio" or "Stay Behind Networks"). These cells, established to act as fifth columns in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, would be by the United States used to carry out acts of terrorism and create public panic in countries such as Italy to prevent Communists from entering coalition governments.
• Guardian "The German government's efforts to curb the neo-Nazi right were thrown into disarray yesterday when the country's top court blocked its key initiative - an attempt to ban the skinhead-dominated National Democratic party. If the decision was an embarrassment for Gerhard Schröder's centre-left administration, ... The judges ruled that the government's case rested largely on the statements and actions of NPD members who had been shown to be agents of the German intelligence services."
• Global Research "In Europe, the American government actively sought to eliminate political opposition to its fascist world plans through the use of open violent repression and covert terroristic "false flag" attacks upon popular patriotic resistance movements and their leaders. Using ultra right-wing homegrown fascists, in both Europe and America, secret paramilitary militias were created, called "Stay Behind" forces at the end of World War II. Since then, the CIA activated these groups to successfully quash anti-American liberal and social democratic popular resistance movements. The agency denies this, but the series of exposes of their network in Europe since 1990 have proven the professed denials to be false."
• .... ban the party of the ultra-right nationalists NPD for unconstitutional behavior and terroristic acts committed by party-members. but... they just couldn´t ban the NPD, because no less than half of the leadership of the party was on the pay-roll of the Verfassungsschutz (which has similar functions as the undercover units of the FBI). ... In Italy this covert CIA project financed in part the ultra-left Red Brigades in terror activities ... however it became a project for false-flag terrorism, whereby those terror acts were blamed on radical left-wing groups. terms: Masonic, P2, Ledeen (Rove's Brain)  NPD leader Udo Voight, NPD campaign: boycott US products, protest Iraq war.
•  

(And if you are not a Parliamentarian, make sure your Parliamentarians get this message, for otherwise they will give the key of democracy to the devil without even being aware of it!)

As indicated in the precedent article "ESM, the new European dictator" , the Ministers of Finance of the 17 euro-countries, on July 11th 2011, have signed a Treaty for the Establishment of the European Stability Mechanism. Its purpose it to make the citizens pay for the hundreds of billions of euros that are pumped into the rescue funds to save the euro and to get the national parliaments in a strangle hold.

The signature was not noticed by the international press. Many journalists still confuse this new ESM-treaty with its (illegal) predecessors, the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM) and the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). De EFSF now has a lending capacity of 440 billion euros. (1.000 billion since 27 October 2011.) The ESM is without limit.

At the moment of writing this treaty still has to be ratified by the national parliaments in all 17 countries, except if such has already taken place silently here and there.

For a short introduction in the ESM-treaty you can view this 3.5 minutes video on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxMOW94V6xQ

ESM, a coup d'état in 17 countries!

If by coup d'état we understand a seizure of the real power and a limitation of the power of the democratically chosen parliament, then this ESM-treaty is a coup d'état in 17 countries simultaneously.

This is completely in line with the philosophy of the European Commission, which, according to its President Barroso, must be "the economic government of the Union, that defines the actions that governments have to execute." (28 Spetember 2011) [1]

The european Stability Mechanism (ESM) is not that much a mechanism, but rather a new administration of the European Union (EU). The reported goal is to supply loans (under strict conditions) to euro-countries, which cannot fulfil their financial obligations. It takes over the tasks of the aforementioned EFSF and EFSM. It is ruled by a Board of Governors. These are the 17 Ministers of Finance of the euro-countries within the EU.

The ESM treaty says in article 8, that this administration gets a social capital of 700 billion euros. Then, in article 10 it says that the Board of Governors may decide to change this amount and adapt article 8 accordingly. In article 9 it says the Board of Governors may claim unpaid social capital from the member countries at all times (to be paid within 7 days.) So in fact it says the ESM can claim money without limits from the member countries. The treaty does not foresee any right of veto for the national parliaments.

Unanimous

According to article 5.6 the Board of Governors must take the decisions above unanimously. So the entire board must vote "yes".

At first glance, it is very curious that the whole treaty stands or falls with the unanimity of the 17 Ministers of Finance of the euro-countries. When you see how many difficulties they have to overcome for an agreement to be reached over freeing up the loans already promised to Greece, you would not expect that the EU would build a treaty that starts from the view that this unanimity does exist or at least can be achieved.

The eurozone is a colourful reflexion of the diversity of Europe: the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Germany and France and also Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Malta, Greece, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia and finally Estonia and Finland. The 17 Ministers form, in fact, a colourful company too. Each of them represents a country with different interests. And they expect unanimity from them? How is that possible?

To understand, we must look a bit further. It is true, in the ESM the 17 ministers vote on all important decisions, but there are still other people who are present at their meetings, officially as "observers". Wy would these ministers need observers? To check if they do what they are expected to do?

There are three observers: the member of the European Commission in charge of economic and monetary affairs, the President of the Euro Group (the informal club of the 17 Ministers of Finance) the President of the European Central Bank! [2] So, if we can't expect these 17 Ministers of Finance to be unanimous spontaneously, it must be the influence of these observers that achieves it. To understand which influence the European Commission and the ECB can exercise on our ministers, let's take a closer look.

Who are Ministers of Finance?

Well, generally, these are people who come and go. Most of the time they are appointed after the national parlementarian elections, that are initially followed by the bargaining of the coalition discussions and then by the tugging for filling in the most important portfolios, like the Interior Ministry, Economic Affairs and Finance. In the favorable case they have the capacities to lead a ministry. Such a person can lead the Ministry of Defense at one time and be appointed Minister of Education or Social Affairs some other time. Knowledge of matters is considered to be less relevant as managing capacities.

Economy is not Finance

This way, at the moment, we have in the Netherlands a Minister of Finance, Jan Kees de Jager, loaded to the brim with Economic diplomas, but who initially did not show he had any understanding of finance. One of his first ideas was to propose a law that should forbid people to call for a run on the bank. Jan Kees, banks have no money! For each euro the customers of ING (the biggest Dutch bank) have in their account, the bank only has 3 cents. You don't expect people to line up for so little? And furthermore, as long as the central bank does not want a bank to fall, the latter can easily survive a run on the bank with borrowed money.

Freshly appointed Ministers of Finance are, generally, extremely happy they have so much success in their career, but they arrive in a world they hardly know or don't know at all. That is the self-inportant little world of international financial institutions and the world of figures with an endless number of zeros. A little moment of inattention and you are mistaken by douzens of billions. (That happened to Dutch Prime Minister Rutte and Jan Kees de Jager when they informed Parliament after a European meeting about Greece. [3] ) These new ministers are an easy prey for the counsellors of the ECB and the IMF, who come to explain how things work and what a good Minister of Finance ought to do.

As far as these Ministers of Finance have a basic knowledge in economics, they should know that the whole euro-experiment is deemed to fail. That was already known at the start in 1970, but bankers and opinionated politicians pushed the shared currency forward. The point is that a unique currency can only work in a economically homogeneous area. [4] [5] [6] Here is why.

The prison of the fixed exchange rates

When consumers, in countries with less possibilities for productivity, prefer cheaper and better products from abroad, the external debt will increase. At the same time the internal productivity decreases. A country that has its own currency, can devaluate its currency then. That makes imported products more expensive for its own population and makes exported products cheaper for foreign purchasers. The debt will decrease and the productivity will increase again. Devaluations were very common before the euro started. The euro works as a fixed exchange rate. Less productive countries are like rats in a trap. They will never be able to get out of debts again. That is why, the chosen method to load still higher debts on these countries is strange and ill-disposed.

Long live the free capital market!

We should not forget these countries did not have big and insurmountable problems when they entered the euro-zone. Otherwise, they would not have been accepted. The problems arose, because with their admission in the eurozone, the free circulation of capital became a fact too. Banks from existing euro-countries came on a massive scale to supply cheap loans to the new euro-citizens. And because, with a same capital, banks are allowed to lend out twice as much for mortgages than for other types of loans, they mainly financed housing. However, the bankers forgot, that people don't need just a roof above their head, but they also need income to pay back the loans. So the bankers should have financed sufficient economic activities too. But that did not happen. This way, a first wave of new euro-citizens became indebted without possibilities to pay back their debts. The real estate market crashed. The entrepreneurs and their suppliers went broke, leaving behind a desolate scene of empty and unfinished housing quarters.

The problematic euro-rules

More over, countries were labelled "problem countries", exclusively because they could not meet the artificially set demands for the euro-zone anymore, that is to say a maximum budget deficit of 3% of their BIP and a maximum debt of 60% of the BIP. [7] Normally, it is not a problem for a country when the debt is twice as high, when, for instance, it is counterbalanced by possessions like in Greece. And a shortage on the budget of over 3% does not need to be a problem for a country either. In fact, the only problem was, that the set limits for the euro-zone turned out to be irrealistic and virtually no member country could meet them. You could also say, that those who had established these unfeasible exigences were dumbos, as well as the ministers who promised they would respect them. Anyway, it is a simple way to create a crisis.

Black sheep

Because nearly all countries had surpassed the set limits, it was important to divert the attention and point gaudily in the direction of the naughtiest boy in the classroom. For Greece, these officials even created a complete defamation campaign, in which lying Dutch politicians also cheerfully participated. Greece would have hidden its debt [8], and the Greeks were lazy and retired early etc. [9] Rapidly Greece came under attack and had to pay ever higher interest for its loans. Fortunately its euro-class friends wanted to help. Jan Kees even promised we would earn money on it.

Money is power

Once you have manoeuvered your vicyim into trouble - again, Greece did not have insurmountable problems when it became member of the eurozone - you can apply the politics of the carrot and the stick: "We will supply loans, but under condition that..." The IMF has half a century of experience with this kind of abuse of power and has applied this politic mischievously in many developing countries. First the country is overloaded with loans, so as it isn't even able to pay the interest. The loans are provided for specific projects. Most often they are executed by foreign companies. They receive the money from the loans. The country stays with the debts. Further more everything the country has of value is sold to foreign investors. And of course the government has to cut its expenses to the bones and the population must bleed, so they know the IMF has the power.

Seizure of power of the European Commission

Although, according to article 122.2 of the TFEU [10] the European Council can offer financial help to countries in difficulties (on proposal of the European Commission), the wolfs of the European Commission could not resist the temptation to establish their own IMF, or more exactly, a European brother, that would closely cooperate with the IMF.

They got it off the ground in May and June 2010, the EFSM and the EFSF. They have a temporary character and juridical defaults. The loan capacity of the EFSF has recently been increased to 1,000 billion euros (that represents 3,300 per euro-citizen) and its role has been extended to save the banks too.

Their successor is the ESM. It has been signed on 11 July 2011 and awaits ratification by the national parliaments. The ESM gets a permanent character and the power to claim unlimited money from the States' Vaults and lend it out at cost and risk of the eurocitizens. They are to start with a social capital of 700 billion (2100 per euro-citizen), but they are already speaking about an increase to 1.5 to 2 trillion that they think they will need.

Amendment of article 136

The ESM is based on an amendment of article 136 of the TFEU of 23 March 2011 [11], wich, in fact, contains an extension of the competences of the EU, since this amendment allows for the establishment of administrations that limit the power of national parliaments. And because this amendment is based on article 48.6 of the Treaty of Europe, this is an illegal construction. [12] In Brussels they don't care about that and, similarly, the national parliaments don't think the transgression of the democratic rules is that important. For the consequence would be, that the population would first have to vote about the extension of competences of Brussels. And that stupid population would surely vote against it!

The ESM gets the power to empty the States' Vaults without the Parliaments being able to stop them. Moreover the amendment - strictly according to its text - enables the establishment of all kinds of anti-democratic administrations, which under pretext to fight the instability in the eurozone can limit the effects of national legislation and can limit civil rights.

Shock and awe

Create a crisis and seize power. At the moment a country is totally disrupted, you can shape things the way you want. It is a violent scenario the advocates of the free market economy havave applied for decades in many countries like England, Poland, China, South-Africa, Russia and the US. I refer to one of the most reveiling books of our time: The Shock Doctrine of Naomie Klein (available in many languages, a must-read.)

Now it is Greece's turn. The defamation has done its work. The citizens in the other euro-countries hardly protest, and when they do, it is mainly because of the possible loss of their money, that their pension funds have invested there. But if they would think a little bit further, they would understand that they too are manoeuvered into debts by the rescue funds and can be the next victims tomorrow. That can happen from one day to the next, announced by a newspaper title like "ING may fail"...

Vicious circle

In the meantime, in the panic of this manufactured crisis, parliaments accept urgency measures they did not even consider the day before. Now, with the money from the urgency funds banks must be saved too. In the Netherlands they agreed with that on 6 October 2011 (the Socialist Party voted against it), Slovakia was the last to agree with the EFSF-expansion on 13 October 2011, after using the issue to dismiss the government.

So now we have a vicious circle: the banks cause the problems, they may profit directly and indirectly from the loans of the emergency measures, and they may lend out still more recklessly, for possible losses will be paid by the euro-citizens.

Away with unanimous decision making

Back to the ESM. That treaty stands or falls with the unanimity of the 17 Ministers of Finance. The European Commission and the European Central bank are confident they have enough influence to get the 17 noses in the same direction.

Well, to be exact, 17 is not really necessary. A decision is also valid when not all ministers are present. Each minister represents a number of votes, related to the number of shares his country has in the ESM. (See annexe below this article.) When 2/3 of the ministers with 2/3 of the votes are present, a ballot can be held validly. And when ministers who are present for the vote, don't vote, that still counts as a unanimous decision. As long as nobody actually votes against it.

In theory, a hard headed minister of a small country could block the whole proces. (He must be very daring.) Barroso does not want that anymore. He wants all the European Treaties to be changed in order to abolish the unanimous decision making process. For the ESM that would mean that if Germany, France, Italy and a smaller country like the Netherlands agree with each other, the 13 other countries have nothing more to say. Long live the dictatorship in Brussels! Long live the EU!

Inviolability

We are already used to the fact that administrators and representatives of the people do not want to answer for their words and deeds. But at the ESM they exaggerate this to the extreme. The rules are set in a way, that everyone who works there can do or not do anything he likes, without having to answer for it to parliaments, administrations or judges! At the utmost a Minsiter of Finance can be replaced by another, who will immediately enjoy the same excessive privileges. A criminal could not wish a better den.

A final thought

The European Union has the free market economy as laid down principle. Meanwhile, almost everybody has understood that deregulation of banks, privatizations of infrastructures and the abolition of governmental functions lead to a harsh society, plagued by crises. These principles are outdated. The advocates of these principles will only be able to push them forward with violence. Greece won't be the last victime.

Annexe

Repartition of the votes among the Governors of the ESM according to the numbers of shares the member coountries detain.

Subscriptions to the authorised capital stock

ESM Member

Number of shares

Capital subscription (EUR)

Kingdom of Belgium 243 397

24 339 700 000

Federal Republic of Germany 1 900 248

190 024 800 000

Republic of Estonia 13 020

1 302 000 000

Ireland 111 454

11 145 400 000

Hellenic Republic 197 169

19 716 900 000

Kingdom of Spain 833 259

83 325 900 000

French Republic 1 427 013

142 701 300 000

Italian Republic 1 253 959

125 395 900 000

Republic of Cyprus 13 734

1 373 400 000

Grand Duchy of Luxembourg 17 528

1 752 800 000

Malta 5 117

511 700 000

Kingdom of the Netherlands 400 190

40 019 000 000

Republic of Austria 194 838

19 483 800 000

Portuguese Republic 175 644

17 564 400 000

Republic of Slovenia 29 932

2 993 200 000

Slovak Republic 57 680

5 768 000 000

Republic of Finland 125 818

12 581 800 000

Total 7 000 000

700 000 000 000

Sources and references

[1] Barroso, 28 September 2011 http://euobserver.com/19/113760

[2] Officially, the European Central bank is not an organ of the European Union.* The ECB is the property of the central banks of the euro-countries. In turn, they are independent from the national governments in the sense that they do not take orders from them. They are ruled by a board of private persons. So the euro does not belong to the EU, neither to the national governments, but to a cartel of private bankers, the ECB in Franckfurt, the town of the Rothschild. The EU cannot give any order to the ECB, but inversily the ECB has power within the EU. It governs the European System of Central Banks (ESCB), which is an EU organ. The ECB, together with the central banks of the eurozone, are the members of this ESCB. How complicated do they have to make it to integrate a private company as an official organ with the power of an official organ?

* http://www.europarl.europa.eu/parliament/expert/displayFtu.do?id=73&ftuId=FTU_5.2.html&language=en

[3] Vrijspreker 22 July 2011 *

The Dutch government and the European Commission contradict each other about the size of the new support package for Greece. According to the Ministry of Finance the amount is 109 billion euros, of which 50 billion will come from the banks and other financial institutions. According to the European Commission the governments contribute 109 billion euros and on top of it 50 billion will come from private institutions. The Dutch central bank doesn't know: "We too, we are very curious to know what has been decided", a spokesman of the DNB says. The European Central Bank refers to the European Commission.

* http://www.vrijspreker.nl/wp/2011/07/eu-euro-reddingsactie-geklungel/

[4] In the studies about optimum currency areas we can distinguish those focusing on the needed conditions and those from after 1970 (when politicians had decided they wanted a single currency in Europe) focusing on cost and benefits.

Roman Horvath and Lubos Komarek in “OPTIMUM CURRENCY AREA THEORY: AN APPROACH FOR THINKING ABOUT MONETARY INTEGRATION” (2002)

“It is possible to distinguish two major streams of the optimum currency area literature. The first stream tries to find the crucial economic characteristics to determine where the (illusionary) borders for exchange rates should be drawn (1960s-1970s). The second stream (1970s-till now) assumes that any single country fulfills completely the requirements to make it an optimal member of a monetary union. As a result, the second approach does not continue in the search for characteristics, identified as important for choosing the participants in an optimum currency area. This literature focuses on studying the costs and the benefits to a country intending to participate in a currency area.”

http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1539/1/WRAP_Horvath_twerp647.pdf , page 7.

Friedman put forward the advantages of flexible exchange rates between countries as follows: As it is commonly observed, the country’s prices and wages are relatively rigid and factors are immobile among the countries. As a result, under the negative demand or supply shock the only instrument to avoid higher inflation or unemployment is the change in the flexible exchange rate (that means appreciation or depreciation of the currency). This brings the economy back to the initial external and internal equilibrium. (...) Under the fixed exchange rate regime there would always be the unpleasant impact on unemployment or inflation.

http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1539/1/WRAP_Horvath_twerp647.pdf , page 8.

[5] Yrd. Doç. Dr. Hüseyin Mualla YÜCEOL, Mersin Üniversitesi İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, Maliye Bölümü, in “WHY THE EUROPEAN UNION IS NOT AN OPTIMAL CURRENCY AREA: THE LIMITS OF INTEGRATION”

Europe is not an optimal currency area. Although, On January 1, 1999, 11 EU countries initiated an EMU by adopting common currency, the euro, the EU does not appear to satisfy all of the criteria for an optimum currency area. Then, joining the EU is not identical with joining the euro for both old members and new members.

http://eab.ege.edu.tr/pdf/6_2/C6-S2-M6.pdf , page 66

[6] Paul de Grauwe, excerpts of speech

“With up to twenty-seven members instead of the present twelve, the challenge for ensuring a smooth functioning of the enlarged Eurozone will be daunting. The reason is that in such a large group the probability of what economists call ‘asymmetric shocks’ will increase significantly. This means that some countries may experience a boom and inflationary pressures while others experience deflationary forces. If too many asymmetric shocks occur, the ECB will be paralyzed, not knowing whether to increase or to reduce the interest rates. As a result, member countries will often feel frustrated with the ECB policies that do not (and cannot) take into account the different economic conditions of the individual member countries. This leads us to the question whether the enlarged EMU will, in fact, be an optimal currency area.” (...)

“If a country is hit by negative shocks brought about by agglomeration effects, the wage cuts necessary to deal with these shocks will inevitably be very large. To give an example: If Ford Motor were to close down a plant in Belgium and to invest in Poland instead, the wage cut of Belgian workers that would convince Ford Motor not to make this move would have to be 50% or more given that the wage not feasible, then flexibility dictates that the Belgian workers be willing to move.”

http://mostlyeconomics.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/were-europes-curent-problems-never-imagined/

[7] These are the requirements of the Stability and Growth Pact.

[8] Nikolaos Salavrakos, Member of the European Parliament in "Is there a way out?"

http://www.efdgroup.eu/news/99-the-greek-fiscal-crisis-is-there-a-way-out.html

[9] OECD statistics

http://www.oecd.org/document/47/0,3343,en_2649_34747_39371887_1_1_1_1,00.html

[10] Article 122.2 of the Treaty on the Functioning odf the European Union:

"Where a Member State is in difficulties or is seriously threatened with severe difficulties caused by natural disasters or exceptional occurrences beyond its control, the Council, on a proposal from the Commission, may grant, under certain conditions, Union financial assistance to the Member State concerned. (...)"

[11] European Parliament resolution of 23 March 2011 on the draft European Council decision amending Article 136 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P7-TA-2011-0103+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN

[12] art 48.6 Treaty of the European Union

eur-lex.europa.eu

TREATY ESTABLISHING THE EUROPEAN STABILITYMECHANISM (ESM) http://consilium.europa.eu/media/1216793/esm%20treaty%20en.pdf

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