The EU's 'beneficial crisis' has spun out of control

'Europe' expected to be united through emergencies, but this one will tear it apart.


From The Telegraph, 02 Jun 2012
By Christopher Booker

So battle-weary have our media become in covering the slow-motion collapse of the euro that it took them quite a while to wake up to the gravity of the crisis building up over the latest episode – the impending bankruptcy of Spain. On Thursday –while even the EU’s economic affairs commissioner was warning of the “disintegration” of the eurozone, and a former Spanish prime minister spoke of “a total emergency, the worst crisis we have ever lived through” – one internet summary of the day’s top stories (headed by “Jeremy Hunt”) ranked Spain only 20th on the list.

Even those commentators who have tried to put this latest crisis into perspective often revealed how hazily informed many of them are about the history of the EU, and what a central role the creation of the euro has played in it. The BBC’s Robert Peston, for instance, was not the only one to “explain” how the idea of a single currency was concocted by Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand after the fall of Communism in 1989. One cannot, however, grasp the significance of the euro without realising that its history goes much further back than that.

As long ago as 1957, Jean Monnet – who was the real organising genius behind the gradual building of “Europe” into a single, unified state – suggested that it was only through monetary and economic union that the “political union which is the goal” could be achieved. “There are no premature ideas,” he wrote, “only opportunities for which we must learn to wait.”

By 1970, Monnet’s ideas were being fleshed out by the Werner report, which saw monetary union as the key step towards political union. But in 1978, another report for the European Commission, by Sir Donald McDougall, warned that it would be reckless to create a single currency unless Europe was first given an all-powerful government, with the power to tax, and to make a massive transfer of resources from the richer states to the poorer.

In the 1980s, though, that other great integrator Jacques Delors (second only to Monnet in his influence on the drive to European political union) decided to ignore the advice of McDougall and others and to launch the single currency without the suggested preconditions. To move straight to fiscal union, he knew, was not on the cards. But if the single currency was put in place first, it would create exactly the kind of strains which had been foreseen – making fiscal union the only way out.

Delors was banking on that same principle that Monnet had relied on ever since the “European project” was launched in 1950: the “beneficial crisis” – one which can be used, as so often in the EU’s history, to justify giving a whole new tranche of powers to Brussels. Those responsible for setting up the euro in the 1990s knew that it would eventually bring about the kind of strains between richer and poorer countries that could justify their moving on to the fiscal and political union that was always the real goal.

What they hadn’t reckoned with was that the crisis, when it came, would be so immense that it would spiral out of anyone’s control. Thus, amid the present shambles, we hear distracted voices calling for “more Europe” – more powers for Brussels, a new treaty – but the truth is that the chaos has gone way beyond their ability to solve it. They are not going to get their new powers, their “eurobonds”, their fiscal union.

As the ultimate “beneficial crisis” that the architects of Europe dreamt of arrives – it is not turning out to be so beneficial after all. As Shakespeare put it, they have been “hoist with their own petard”, as “purposes mistook fall on the inventors’ heads”.

They have been horribly caught out, and the result, as we begin to see, is a catastrophe which could be about to take a great deal more of their “European dream” with it.

Clarke asleep on the job again

That unreconstructed old 1960s Europhile Kenneth Clarke gets so many things wrong that even when he gets something right he does so for the wrong reason. Apart from being photographed sleeping at a Test match, his major contribution to public life last week was the noisy scorn he poured on the “frenzied Eurosceptics” who are calling for an EU referendum.

It might seem odd for him to be so dissmissive of a proposal apparently favoured by 83 per cent of the members of the party he nominally represents (70 per cent of whom, according to the same survey, want to see Britain leave the EU altogether). But if he was as clever as that similarly besotted EU-addict Lord Mandelson – who is now calling for a referendum – Mr Clarke would see how this might actually serve his purpose. However hostile to the EU most British people have become, the fact is that an “in or out” referendum campaign might well present us with a similar line-up to the one we saw in 1975.

The leaderships of our major parties, along with the BBC and the rest of the politically correct establishment, would all be calling for Britain to stay in. Over the years, the public has been so consistently misinformed about the EU that, without an honest debate to lay bare the real damage that membership has done to Britain, and how we could overcome the difficulties involved in leaving – and without a proper vision of what our role in the world might be once we had escaped the clutches of this dying incubus – we could well end up, as in 1975, with precisely the result that would make Mr Clarke happy.

Unable to see that, though, he simply falls back on his usual line in empty and contemptuous bluster.
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US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia have plotted bloodbath for years.

By Tony Cartalucci
Land Destroyer, June 2, 2012

Timeline

1991: Paul Wolfowitz, then Undersecretary of Defense, tells US Army General Wesley Clark that the US has 5-10 years to “clean up those old Soviet client regimes, Syria, Iran, Iraq, before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.” Fora.TV: Wesley Clark at the Commonwealth Club of California, October 3, 2007.

2001: A classified plot is revealed to US Army General Wesley Clark that the US plans to attack and destroy the governments of 7 nations: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. Fora.TV: Wesley Clark at the Commonwealth Club of California, October 3, 2007.

Separa

2002: US Under Secretary of State John Bolton declares Syria a member of the “Axis of Evil” and warned that “the US would take action.” BBC: “US Expands ‘Axis of Evil’” May 6, 2002.

2005: US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy organizes and implements the “Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon directly aimed at undermining Syrian-Iranian influence in Lebanon in favor of Western-backed proxies, most notably Saad Hariri’s political faction. Counterpunch: “Faking the Case Against Syria,” by Trish Schuh November 19-20, 2005.

Image: Via Color Revolutions and Geopolitics: "As illustrated by the images above, Lebanon's so-called [2005] Cedar Revolution was an expensive, highly-professional production." (click image to enlarge) 

….

2005: Ziad Abdel Nour, an associate of Bush Administration advisers, policy makers, and media including Neo-Conservatives Paula Dobriansky, James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, Joseph Farah (World Net Daily), Clifford May, and Daniel Nassif of US State Department-funded Al Hurra and Radio Sawa, admits: “Both the Syrian and Lebanese regimes will be changed- whether they like it or not- whether it’s going to be a military coup or something else… and we are working on it. We know already exactly who’s going to be the replacements. We’re working on it with the Bush administration.” Counterpunch: “Faking the Case Against Syria,” by Trish Schuh November 19-20, 2005. 

2006: Israel attempts, and fails, to destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon after a prolonged aerial bombard that resulted in thousands of civilian deaths. CNN: “UN: Hezbollah and Israel agree on Monday cease-fire,” August 13, 2006.

2007: Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker reveals that US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Hariri in Lebanon as well as the Syrian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood were assembling, arming, training, and heavily funding a sectarian extremists front, many of whom had direct ties to Al Qaeda, to unleash in both Lebanon and Syria. The goal was to create and exploit a sectarian divide between Sunni and Shi’ia Muslims. Hersh interviewed intelligence officers who expressed concerns over the “cataclysmic conflict” that would result, and the need to protect ethnic minorities from sectarian atrocities. The report indicated that extremists would be logistically staged in northern Lebanon where they would be able to cross back and forth into Syria. New Yorker: “The Redirection,” by Seymour Hersh, March 5, 2007.

2008: The US State Department begins training, funding, networking, and equipping “activists” through its “Alliance for Youth Movements” where the future protest leaders of the “Arab Spring,” including Egypt’s “April 6 Movement” were brought to New York, London, and Mexico, before being trained by US-funded CANVAS in Serbia, and then returning home to begin preparations for 2011. Land Destroyer: “2011 – Year of the Dupe,” December 24, 2011.

Which Path to Persia? .pdf
….

2009: The Brookings Institution published a report titled, “Which Path to Persia?” (.pdf), which admits that the Bush Administration "evicted" Syria from Lebanon without building up a strong Lebanese government to replace it (p. 34), that Israel struck a "nascent" Syrian nuclear program, and states the importance of neutralizing Syrian influence before any attack on Iran can be carried out (p. 109).  The report then goes on to describe in detail the use of listed terrorist organizations against the government of Iran, in particular the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) (p. 126) and Baluch insurgents in Pakistan (p.132). Brookings Institution: “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran,” June 2009. 

2009-2010: In an April 2011 AFP report, Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, admitted that the “US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments.” The report went on to admit that the US (emphasis added) “organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt,Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there.” Posner would add, “They went back and there’s a ripple effect.” AFP: “US Trains Activists to Evade Security Forces,” April 8, 2011.

2011: Posner’s US trained, funded, and equipped activists return to their respective countries across the Arab World to begin their “ripple effect.” Protests, vandalism , and arson sweep across Syria and “rooftop snipers” begin attacking both protesters and Syrian security forces, just as Western-backed movements were documented doing in Bangkok, Thailand one year earlier. With a similar gambit already unfolding in Libya, US senators begin threatening Syria with long planned and sought after military intervention. Land Destroyer: “Syria: Intervention Inevitable,” April 29, 2011.

Image: Real genocidal atrocities during the “Arab Spring” occurred at the hands of NATO and its proxy sectarian terrorists. Pictured is Sirte, Libya, after NATO-armed rebels surrounded it, cut off power, water, food, and emergency aid, and allowed NATO to bombard it with daily airstrikes before a final orgy of death and destruction left its streets and facades crumbling. This is the “civilian protection” the UN and its enforcement arm NATO plan on bringing to Syria.

….

2012: With NATO’s Libyan intervention resulting in a weak US-backed Tripoli client-regime, perpetual infighting, nationwide genocide, and the succession of Benghazi in the east, the NATO-backed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), listed by the US State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (listed #27) begins mobilizing weapons, cash, and fighters to begin destabilizing Syria. Headed by LIFG’s Abdul Hakim Belhaj, this would be the first confirmed presence of Al Qaeda in Syria, flush with NATO weapons and cash. The Washington Post would confirm, just as stated by Hersh in 2007, that the US and Saudi Arabia were arming the sectarian extremists, now labeled the “Free Syrian Army.” The Post also admits that the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, as stated in Hersh’s 2007 report, was also involved in arming and backing extremist fighters. Land Destroyer: “US Officially Arming Extremists in Syria,” May 16, 2012.

Image: Brookings Institution’s Middle East Memo #21 “Assessing Options for Regime Change (.pdf),” makes no secret that the humanitarian “responsibility to protect” is but a pretext for long-planned regime change.

….

2012: The US policy think-tank Brookings Institution in its Middle East Memo #21 “Assessing Options for Regime Change (.pdf),” admits that it does not seek any negotiated ceasefire under the UN’s “Kofi Annan peace plan” that leaves Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power and would rather arm militants, even with the knowledge they will never succeed to “bleed” the government, “keeping a regional adversary weak, while avoiding the costs of direct intervention.” This reveals that US policy does not view US interference in Syria as a moral imperative predicated on defending human rights, but rather using this false predication to couch aspirations of regional hegemony. Land Destroyer: “US Brookings Wants to “Bleed” Syria to Death,” May 28, 2012.

Save Syria Now

The premeditated nature of not only regime change in Syria, but the use of sectarian terrorists to wring such change out of a sea of blood, is clearly and extensively documented. There is nothing that the Syrian government can do, beyond crushing this foreign legion of terrorists and restoring order, that will prevent in any imaginable way the humanitarian crisis that is planned for Syria. As seen in Libya, the torture, atrocities, genocide, and disorder only just begin with the fall of a targeted government.  The US means to create a sectarian extremist state with which to array against neighboring Iran.
 

Image: The people of Tawargha are Libyans and have been Libyan for generations, settling there from sub-Saharan Africa. They have been brutally persecuted by the NATO-armed terrorists now running Libya. In Syria, expect these to be Alawite, Christian, and secular faces staring back as they face a doomed future. Contrary to the West’s claims, the genocide and atrocities will only just begin if the so-called “Free Syrian Army” prevails over the Syrian government. The US knows this of course – as the purpose of this exercise is to create a sectarian extremist state to play off against neighboring Iran.

 ….

The sectarian nature of the Syrian opposition, the so-called “Free Syrian Army” is already playing out against Syria’s 10% Christian population, according to the LA Times’ “Church fears ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Christians in Homs, Syria,” and more recently in USA Today’s distorted, but still telling, “Christians in Syria live in uneasy alliance with Assad, Alawites.” Likewise, sectarian division, not “aspirations for democracy and freedom,” were identified as the driving force behind the Houla Massacre, with both sides claiming the other carried out the attacks because of the ethnic background and convictions of the victims. Not only did US, Israeli, and Saudi conspirators purposefully unleash sectarian extremists inside of Syria, but they did so with full knowledge and the intent that atrocities like the one in Houla, Syria would result.

It is clear, as memorialized in the Washington Post’s article, “Syrian rebels get influx of arms with gulf neighbors’ money, U.S. coordination,” that these sectarian extremists and their campaign of terror is propped up solely on US, NATO, and Gulf State support. Even as these sectarian terrorists admit they are conducting bombing campaigns, carried out by Al Qaeda affiliates who cultivated their skills killing foreign occupiers and locals in nearby Iraq, and despite an increasing list of atrocities attributed to them by both Human Rights Watch and the UN itself, the West, the US in particular still advocates sending more weapons, and even direct military intervention on their behalf.

The BBC recently lamented in “Can Syria avoid sliding into ‘catastrophic civil war’?” that “there is no alternative to UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan’s peace mission.” The BBC, after over a year of claiming the Syrian uprising was driven by aspirations for “democracy and freedom,” now concedes that the conflict is primarily sectarian – as genuine political analysts had maintained from the beginning. BBC's Jim Muir attempts to leave readers begging for the world to "intervene" after describing the "incalculable consequences" of a sectarian-driven "catastrophic civil war from which the country would never recover." Of course, for those who have taken the time to examine the admitted, documented machinations of the West – sectarian strife, Sunni verses Shi'ia, were the tools of choice from the beginning for shattering not only Syria, but neighboring Lebanon and Iran.  

The Clear Choice

It is clear what must be done to avert a repeat of a Libyan-style genocidal catastrophe and save Syria. The support for sectarian terrorists by the West must end. The weapons and foreign fighters flowing from Libya, Lebanon’s north, Turkey, and the Gulf States must be stopped. The Syrian government must be allowed to quickly restore order and reassert the protection it has provided Syria’s many ethnic minorities for decades against extremists of the Muslim Brotherhood and now Al Qaeda. The political transition the West speaks about as the only “acceptable outcome” for Syria will leave the nation, as it did Libya, under the rule of an ineffectual government hiding in Damascus while the rest of the country is torn apart by genocidal sectarian terrorists flush with NATO and Gulf State weapons and cash.

It is clear what must be done to save Syria, and it is clear that those who ignore this obvious choice are promoting a war of aggression against a nation that posed no threat to their security. This constitutes a crime against world peace and is punishable under the Nuremberg precedent. 

….

Please read through the “Solutions” archive to see ways of exposing, undermining, and replacing the corporate-financier interests driving this global campaign of destabilization and military aggression.

Lew Rockwell on Crooked Elections, Crooked Markets, and Crooked Numbers

From CapitalAccount, June 1, 2012:

Welcome. It's June first, but already, the Dow has wiped out its gains for the year. European stock markets in the meanwhile have been on a steady decline sincemid-March of this year, with markets in Greece, Spain, and Italy already having broken through their 2009 lows and French markets very close to breaking new ground as well. 

Meanwhile, the latest slew of data, not just in the US, but around the world is pointing to a global slowdown. This is particularly alarming, as the global economy has been on life support, with central banks the world over throwing everything PLUS the kitchen sink at financial markets with negative real interest rates, quantitative easing and fiscal stimulus. What exactly is left for them to do? Buy stocks??? 

Now...CONTRARY to popular belief, the bailouts of 2008 were LESS about the money spent by governments, and MORE about the confidence inspired by the notion that governments and central banks could, through their open market operations and helicopter money drops, prevent - INDEED REVERSE - the economic contractionthat was then well-underway.

Now, that confidence seems to be eroding at an alarming rate. The markets have already left the equities party, looking for safety in German Bunds, US Treasuries, and Gold, while borrowing costs for countries like Italy and Spain have alreadypushed their respective governments to the point of effective insolvency, forcing the ECB's monetization engines to work overtime.

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But thishasn't perturbed our global policy elite with their collective Atlas complex from going back to the monetary wishing well for more of the same medicine that has been poisoning the patient since the onset of the crisis, and well before.

When will they learn that no amount of talk or action on the part of a narrow group of bankers and politicians can solve the problems of too much debt and malinvestment? Well, it's a question we pose to our guest, economist and founder of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, Lew Rockwell.