In a Karlsruhe Court Euope's Future is being Cast

Germany has conqured Europe once again!

What is now being debated in the Constitutional Court of that once again united and thus newly dangerous country, is whether and how those conquests will be handled and dealt with over the coming years.

The potential for aggression and further oppression is fearfully demonstrated in the sudden closure of the Greek state broadcaster this very week.

Other reporters on this topic have not spelt out this reality quite so clearly, some of that comment, eg from Time and The Economist's Charlemagne, is linked.

The direction of the eventual court ruling, while not due for months, will be likely discernible as the general election campaign, now underway, progresses within Germany.

The leaders of the other EU Member States need to immediately halt their studious pretence of being merely disinterested lookers-on.

All Europeans have a vested interest in the outcome of the daily growing horror now surely plainly discernible to all!

What are Britain, France and Italy to do about Germany?

Under the guise of a review of two books on Germany, the Charlemagne column in tomorrow's Economist Magazine raises the reality of German power in today's EU. Read here.

On the week of the funeral of Margaret Thatcher, this seems most appropriate. Norman Tebbit, one of her closest ministerial colleagues, finely tuned in to her beliefs, in his comment last weekend for the Mail, blamed those in her Party who had her removed as working for Brussels, many suspect that is in fact merely code for German influence and objectives.

The 26 other countries of the EU will eventually have to decide their own attitudes to German control of their former nations, many European citizens whose forebears fought and emigrated to avoid such a fate, are likely to be unhappy at that prospect.

The leaders of the larger non-German EU ex-nations have a formidable problem to face, Italy actually physically lacks a leader as well as the character attributes one associates with such a position, as seems to be the case for both Britain and France. Nevertheless something has to be faced, we cannot go on much longer with children being allowed to starve in Greece, as was reported in the New York Times yesterday!

Greater Germany is Born

New Year's Day of 2013, in so far as the English speaking press of the world was concerned, was dominated by the negotiations over the so-called Fiscal Cliff in the USA and the 40th anniversary of Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland joining, what was then called the Common Market, with several mainland European states, now, with UK consent, morphed into the European Union.

History, however, seems likely to mark that day as the one on which the Fiscal Compact or Fiscal Stability Treaty (as it is now to be known) came into force - building on the yet to be completely finalized ESM Treaty and the still to be agreed arrangements for the approved Financial Transaction Tax. Together, these three agreements, in principle giving effect to what in reality can only be described as, "Greater Germany", a new type of sovereign state, up to now lacking any trace of democracy or citizen consent, or so far, an identifiable individual despot or tyrant at its head. When the latter emerges, we will recognise it, among its historic predecessors, without any difficulty at all, as nothing but the full blooded tyranny some, presumably, have always intended it would be!

While as yet we are thus denied a discernible hate figure upon whom we can focus our comments of contempt, as befits such a collectivist conspiracy, there is no lack of high-profile placemen and placewomen to bear the blame. Prime among these figures are EU Commission President Barroso, EU Council President Van Rompuy, EU High Representative Ashton and Economic Affairs Commissioner Rehn, each contributing their own small part to the resulting dark mess that stains and has become putrid upon the palette we can now see represents the EU.

Barroso is the least cautious in his language on the intent behind the plans for this new pan-European tyranny and it was a mere two days into this new year before he returned to his native Portugal to deliver the following clear threat to assembled Ambassadors, a report of which can be read here:

"Power is currently shifting not only between states but also over and above those states.

"The internationalisation of the financial sector, for example, shows that only supranational regulation through the European Union can restore real decision-making power to European citizens. The key is to exchange formal sovereignty for real influence."

Can nobody in national authority see the emptiness in the words regarding power passing above our heads somehow getting closer to the citizens, far beneath these elite figures who luxuriate in perks and excess while people in the outer reaches of the EU starve and the capital cities of the peripheral states are lit by the fires of burning cars and protesters' flares?

What of the Treaty of Windsor of 1386 (democrats everywhere should now demand to know), presumed to be still in force, marking the oldest alliance in the world between England and Portugal. To the shame of British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Prime Minister David Cameron, they have aligned the United Kingdom on the side of Portugal's oppressors. How long before "Greater Germany" succeeds in crushing Great Britain with weak-willed and unseeing leaders such as these?

The above post was first published by International Business Times on 4th January 2013, linked here.

Have German attitudes in Alabama also sped the EU's downfall?

In February last year I raised some questions about German attitudes towards the outside world and questioned whether they would lead us all to disaster, that post may be read from here.

The ThyssenKrupp US steel plant mentioned in my comment as well as another in Brazil is now reportedly in deep financial difficulties as commented upon by Der Spiegel yesterday, read here, from which comes this telling extract:

 But now Claassen's questionable trips with journalists are the least of ThyssenKrupp's problems. It faces charges that billions in losses and bad planning were covered up for years, and that supervisory board members deliberately gave out false information. In fact, the very survival of the steelmaker, which has been around for more than a century, may be at stake.

In my 2011 posting the EU was in the opening stages of the financial collapse that is now quite clearly engulfing the supposedly peacefully inclined  and well-intentioned trading organisation, but the danger signs in German attitudes to the problems of the peripheral countries already appeared extremely ominous.

I had commented on theses dangers years before, of course, on Ironies and again during 2005, linked here, where this warning had been repeated:

 As was later pointed out on Ironies this compromise did little to overcome the fact that as the EU's most populace member state the voter in Germany has far more power to determine the future course of the EU than any others - this remained particularly true given the power of the Franco/German axis operating under the terms of the Treaty of Paris.

In light of the rapid descent of France into rudderless chaos under the hapless and daily more clueless President Hollande, even that necessity to coordinate decisions with the French has now disappeared. With Italy under the control of an EU puppet interim or resigned PM and its politicians intent upon entering a two month election campaign, Europe appears left with only the vapid and clueless David Cameron to pull it back from the abyss towards which it seems intent upon careering.

In true tradition to all his earlier decisions, the British Prime Minister has decided that this is the moment to force churches up and down the land to perform gay marriage ceremonies with arbitrary exceptions designed apparently to foster further widespread dissent. No doubt the UK media will need no second prompting to concentrate entirely on that matter over the extended Xmas holiday period, disregarding the growing EU chaos on their doorstep, of which, unhappily, Britain is very much a part!

Can nobody with the authority to act see Europe's destination and gather the leaderless European Council together this week to NOW call a halt?

Questions for Merkel, Schauble and all Germans

Following the decisions on legacy debt, insisted upon by Germany at last week's European Council Meeting of the EU's 27 Member States in Brussels:

What are the debts today of Greece, Ireland and Portugal as compared to those debts at the point of their entry into the Troika lending programmes?
 

I will wager that for each country they are today greater by a considerable amount than they were when each country entered their programmes, therefore:

What has been the point of all the unemployment, poverty, hunger and mass emigration the Troika imposed austerity has brought?  

Therefore thirdly and lastly:

Why has Germany again decided to crush and subjugate the entirety of Europe as the answers to the first two questions must lead one to conclude is their plan.

German state broadcaster leads on Greek Corruption.

The leading item on the web page of Deutsche Welle this afternoon concentrates on the levels of corruption amongst the Greek political classes. Hardly the burning issue of the moment it seems to this blogger. It is therefore linked here as an item of curiosity to make one ponder on the real questions of today which that organisation quite obviously is seeking to avoid:

TOP STORIES / World / Europe

World

Corruption and division in Greek's political elite

Athens saw a partial success with the passage of its latest austerity package. But commentators say that Greek politicians are incapable of solving the country's problems, leaving voters with few alternatives.

Guardian reports split in Germany's Conservatives.

The left-wing newspaper report from the UK is linked here. A better feel for what is afoot in Merkel's coalition can IMO be gained from this report in Open Europe's daily e-mail as follows:

Former German President: Eurozone crisis could threaten democracy

In an interview with the German Bundestag’s weekly paper, Das Parliament, former German President and former Chairman of Germany’s Constitutional Court, Roman Herzog, warned that the eurozone crisis could be a threat to democracy. He also argued that “the EU was not conceived as a super state. It will not work. We live in a world which depends on flexibility and the individual initiatives of states. Even today the EU is hamstrung by the masses of rules produced by Brussels...First of all around half of the 70,000 pages of EU regulations ought to be repealed.”
Separately, writing in yesterday’s Handelsblatt, former president of the Federation of German Industries, Professor Hans-Olaf Henkel, describes Chancellor Angela Merkel’s claim that “if the euro fails Europe fails” as a “fallacy”, arguing that “the guarantor of peace is democracy and not the euro…The increasingly undemocratic attempts at crisis management – the constant meddling of German politicians in the affairs of other countries, the limitation of the budgetary control of member states’ parliaments by un-democratically elected centralist supervisors – are leading to a dangerous erosion of democracy.”

The Guardian is linked by Open Europe for a rubbish report about Tory eurosceptics wooing LibDem coaltion partners for a joint position on the EU, I scoured that article for names of such supposed eurosceptical conservatives and found not one, try yourself from here - what rubbish journalism from the Gruniad!

Germany's dilemma & Euro crisis properly explained.

A E-P's latest, here, concludes as follows:

But this is where Germany now is. It must either immolate itself and dismantle the Bismarckian state for the cause of EMU, or prepare to finance an orderly withdrawal from monetary union (with the Finns, Dutch, and Austrians) so that the South can breathe again and hope to recover.

That is the choice. All else is can-kicking, denial, obfuscation, muddle, and self-delusion. As is now becoming obvious, the failure to resolve the matter one way or the other is becoming a danger to the global financial system. It threatens to uncork a global depression. Germany must at last decide.

It is a horrible choice. My sympathies go to the German people who were never given a vote on this ensnarement and infeudation of their peaceful country, and who were egregiously deceived by their own leaders, and who cannot now begin to understand why they suddenly are target of such furious and venomous global criticism.

The Germans too are victims of this ruinous project, the greatest victims of all. Their elites have led them into a diplomatic and economic Stalingrad.

The whole tone of the column assumes this all arrived by accident, which is the exact opposite of what this blogger believes and of what he has been writing about and trying to get across for years.

This blog's view of the present arrangements in Europe is that they are not accidental and they are best summed up by the illustration sent around by email this afternoon by Roger Helmer MEP, titled Euro Crisis Explained, as pasted below:

Sarkozy's speech - an early report in English & Poland's Sikorski

Expatica in France  is linked here. Update WSJ report is here.

Ructions from an increasing role for Germany in Europe are already causing problems in Poland as may be seen from these recent tweets from Open Europe:

Vote will be held on 14th or 15th December but has no chance of going through as Law & Justice only have around 140 out of 460 MPs in Sejm

Following speech calling for more EU integration Law & Justice table vote of no confidence in Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski

A summary for Hng Kong readers, on the unfolding fiasco and the Polish speech, is linked here.

Der Spiegel crows over Germany's New Europe

The article, just released in English,

The Division of Europe

EU Summit Paves the Way for a Split Continent

may be read from here.

Moody's Italian downgrade from Irish Times & the delayed meeting of Sarkozy/Merkel.

The downgrade of Italy by three notches with a negative outlook is best covered from this link.

Attention from the markets will focus on the interest rate increases Italy will now incur and the state of the French Banks. Last evening it was reported some €80 billion of loans would be transferred from troubled Dexia to two state-owned French banks one of which is the equivalent of Britain's Post Office Savings Bank! Such arrangements cannot leave France's sovereign date rating unaffected for very much longer. One earlier report is here, which ends with these supposedly re-assuring paragraphs:

Local governments across France have found their taxpayers' investments at risk and Paris and Brussels are determined not to allow Dexia to fail.
But the CDC and La Poste, which manage funds from French small savers' tax free deposit accounts, are seeking to negotiate with the state a "very tight framework" for their involvement that would not expose the public to risk.
The sources added that said the CDC would not undertake any investment that would endanger its own triple-A credit rating.

The delay in a meeting between Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy, (who had been hinting it would be over the coming days,) has now been announced as coming just before the next EU summit on 17th October, thirteen days after its announcement, a clear sign that Germany seems content to let the French handle the current crisis on their own!

My reply to John Redwood's morning post on German Democracy

German democracy, a crucial topic for all in Europe, for if that fails not even ordinary Germans will have a future say in how 500 million odd europeans will be governed, is the topic of John Redwood's first morning post today, to which I replied as follows:

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

I believe you may have a problem with your intials of the various rescue funds. The EFSF was the original €440 billion fund of the Euro Group. The EFSM was the fund from the EU budget supposedly restricted to €65 billion to which all 27 EU members had to contribute, while the long term facility negotiated and published but not yet ratified will be called the ESM. (Of course in some countries, depending on the language, these initial may all move around or become something even more alien).
After the 21st July meeting of this year the EFSF was agreed to be amended with I believe a 20% voluntary private bank haircut and a provision for the ECB to go further than in the past. This change is slowly going through the 17 European national parliaments and passed tha halfway point yesterday with Finland, albeit laughably still have a parliamentary veto regarding collateral in force (envisioned in the 21st July agreement) most likely to scupper the whole arrangement by precluding the IMF from joining in future advances.
More importantly, on German democracy, as I have quite frequently discussed on my blog, is the ever more obvious fact that the entire EU, given Germany’s economic power, is now dependent on this last remnant of any democracy within the EU. Whoever is put in power in Germany decides the fates of some 500 million Europeans, the Treaties having already been trashed. Today it is likely the amendments to the EFSF will be carried, thanks to the votes of the opposition SPD and the Greens. Watch the leader of the SPD, given present polls he is the putative leader of the EU should Economic Governance of the Euro Zone be allowed to come into force. Nick Clegg, your Coalition partner party leader, is reported by the BBC to be about to urge that course today, following the example set by your own George Osborne.

Merkel's party coalition partners lose Berlin representation

The exit poll results confirm the pre-election polls and see the Pirate Party gain local representation at the expense of the Free Democrats, read here.

Unconscionable Germany re-visited - Westerwelle still hangs on!

The German Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, barely clings to power this evening, as reported by Der Spiegel, linked here.

It was last March when he should have been forced from office, at the same moment a common EU foreign policy and the wasteful EEAS should have been sent to the trash, just as I blogged at the time, read here, from which I quote:

Germany is presently holding a two year seat on the UN Security Council, yet in spite of their Foreign Minister promising that "Germany will be a reliable, responsible and engaged partner....We will do our part to ensure that the world continues to see the council as the central body for peace and security in the world." that country abstained in the vote aimed at putting a halt to the murderous Colonel Gadaffi having a free hand from the international community to carry on recklessly slaughtering his own citizens.

Which EU citizens wish to associate themselves with such an abstention, and what values are thus accepted, effectively stating "our neighbours may do as they wish, as long as we are free to tell all in the EU how to run their societies, while we continue getting ever richer, no matter what bestiality occurs beyond our immediate zone of control"

German locomotive to EU growth smashes into the buffers!

The Washington Post is one of the first out with the shocking German GDP figure which shows that Germany as good as ground to a halt in the second quarter of this year with GDP Growth, compared to the first quarter, at only 0.1%.

Bearing in mind that first quarter growth figures were revised downwards by 0.2%, similar adjustments could actually put Germany into negative territory. The trend is clearly downwards!

What a difference a year makes! Finns must ask before they vote - "Have we been stitched-up"?"

Think back a year and then ponder the following question - How come the Deputy Foreign Minister of Germany was yesterday able to make the following statement, as reported by Bloomberg, linked here:

Germany Would Back Greece Debt Restructuring, Hoyer Says

To assist in trying to untangle what has been going on over the past year readers may wish to consider this "Question and Answer" report issued by Reuters when the Greek crisis was first receiving Germany's attention.

A default by the Greek Government was then considered an impossibility!

So what has changed. In the interim billions has been spent by the EU's illegal EFSF and also by the IMF to prop up the Greek Economy. A year ago German banks were among those most at risk from a Greek default, is that still true today? How much at risk is the ECB compared with one year ago and how much of that new debt must now be met by Finland?

One year ago, this very Saturday, I posted on this blog a long discussion, linked here, of the crisis as it then appeared under the title:

Germans, Napalm and the Euro Currency.

The posting concluded with the following paragraphs, if the people of Finland do not heed this lesson when they go to the polls tomorrow, the rest of Europe will pay the price as the ridiculous and entirely pointless bail outs continue on to Portugal and thereafter Spain, just as that post predicted with despotism as the price:

Yesterday the European Commission, issued a Press Release marked "Rapide" demanding Economic Governance for the EU to be run by the unelected Commission and the appointed EU Council President Van Rompuy.

The EU is detested across the union by its own people as has been made clear in referendum after referendum. It is supported mainly by those in its pay or the inner circles of those in power in its former nation states and all their hangers-on. It is widely known as non-democratic and corrupt. Its Parliament is a mass of time-serving, expense gobbling pygmies who consistently regulate in matters they do not understand for want of anything better to do. We cannot allow the EU to impose the views of the economically strongest states on the less economically adept states, as such can only ultimately be imposed by force.

Europe does not want another jackboot on its throat as ALL Europeans must now remember the price to be paid in removing it. Read all there is in the raids on Royan! Consider the German launched missile attacks on Southern England when Germany already faced certain defeat!

This blog begs the good people of Germany and democrats everywhere to work to prevent a subsided, strings attached Eurozone or EU bail-out for Greece or any other of the PIIGS.

Devaluation under IMF control, following Euro withdrawal, can save Greece just as it did for Argentina.

The Euro is not worth saving when despotism is the certain price. The Euro, in fact cannot be saved now anyway, the economic facts are too stark. Therefore throwing away the freedoms of the people of Europe will be thus even more pointless. Instituting economic control across the EU, as demanded by the EU Commission yesterday will require force? They forget they have no consent nor any votes from the citizens of the EU!

Unconscionable Germany, and the obscene waste by Baroness Ashton and the EEAS.

Every individual employed by the EEAS should tender their resignations this weekend. One parliamentary question indicating the blind and reckless spending of that organisation, tabled last December, is linked here.

The Globe and Mail from Canada this morning publishes an article highlighting the farce that a common EU foreign policy is seen as in the saner world, read here.

Last September the UK Civitas organisation published a report calculating that the costs of the EEAS had by then reached 399 million pounds sterling and that the organisation was mainly engaged in 'spin' a euphemism for lies in post-Blair Britain.

Germany is presently holding a two year seat on the UN Security Council, yet in spite of their Foreign Minister promising that "Germany will be a reliable, responsible and engaged partner....We will do our part to ensure that the world continues to see the council as the central body for peace and security in the world." that country abstained in the vote aimed at putting a halt to the murderous Colonel Gadaffi having a free hand from the international community to carry on recklessly slaughtering his own citizens.

Which EU citizens wish to associate themselves with such an abstention, and what values are thus accepted, effectively stating "our neighbours may do as they wish, as long as we are free to tell all in the EU how to run their societies, while we continue getting ever richer, no matter what bestiality occurs beyond our immediate zone of control!"

What value do EU citizens gain from the hundreds of millions now being squandered by the EEAS? Is such arrogant carelessness what our hundreds of millions of pounds is being spent to promote, while our own aircraft carriers and fighter jets are prematurely scrapped?

Worse still, next week the 26 other nations plan to hand control of the economic governance of the EU to this same Germany. In Britain's case in a manner, sneaked before Parliament, in a grotesque mockery of what was once our democracy.

It is not even as if the events in Libya are happening in some far off corner of the world far from the EU. Malta, an EU member lies close by the Libyan coast less than half an hour flight away.

If this is not a defining crisis for the EU, then what else will ever be? The corrupt, mad and useless spending on the worthless and uselss EU must be brought to an end once and for all! Europeans must be free to consult their own  individual consciences in determining who might govern them. In such a manner do national consciences take form, this process cannot occur within the EU.

EU Foreign Policy muddle

Reuters has a good insight into the Foreign Policy mess already developing within the EU even before ratification of the so-called Reform Treaty. This version appears in the Kuwait Times. In the interests of balance you may also read a positive offering from the Polish Foreign Minister, linked here. In the real world the driving imperative remains to find one or more parliaments willing to ditch this dreadful Treaty and give Europe a chance to restore democracy. This section from the Executive Intelligence Review, linked yesterday and again here, gives some hope such a Parliament might be in Austria, the ousting of the Cyprus president in the first round of elections yesterday show that politicselsewhere are also in a state of flux. All signatories of the Lisbon Treaty deserve urgent ousting! The promised quote:

The Loss of Sovereignty

I have found some highly interesting writings in Austria, where there is a giant debate going on, because of course this treaty is in a sense in still greater contradiction with the Austrian Constitution, because of its neutrality clause. There there is one piece written by Prof. Hans Klecatasky, who is one of the fathers of the Austrian Constitution, and former justice minister of Austria; on Dec. 19, [2007]—six days after the Treaty of Lisbon had been decided upon-he commented as follows: "The Republic of Austria, with its Federal Constitution, is turned into a subdivision of the legal body of the EU. The coordination of both constitutions is replaced definitively by subjugation, submission, and hence by the dissolution of the republic into a European Union. Member-states lose the substance of their existential statehood and turn into merely regional administrative bodies."

The same applies of course to Germany, which basically gave up its own statehood long ago through this treaty; while the words "Federal State" are simply avoided in this European Treaty, it is already de facto the case. This is just semantics, with which an attempt is made to say that Germany's Basic Law [Constitution] would not have to be changed, although in reality it is a complete change of the Basic law.

According to the Basic Law, all power is derived from the people; this no longer applies, but rather it is now with the EU, effective immediately, once the treaty is ratified and adopted. And even our former Federal President Roman Herzog wrote in Welt am Sontag a year ago on Jan. 14, that if this document is implemented, Germany would no longer be a parliamentary democracy, and he therefore favored rejecting the treaty.

Hear the German Ambassador

Hear the official representative of the country the most powerful within the EU, supposedly a partner in an arrangement for which we are in the process of destroying our parlaiment and democracy and trashing our national sovereignty, endeavour to justify his nation's troops idly watching from the north of Afghanistan as so many of our troops make the ultimate sacrifice. This man, Wolfgang Ishinger, pretends that the criticisms from the US Defence Secretary and others are not directed at Germany, this man pretends Germany is a worthwhile partner in joint endeavours, this man is the ambassador from a country complicit in the destruction of our independence by means of the Lisbon Treaty. This man seems to have Britain's politicians in his control! Listen Again to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme around 0840 GMT from here.