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The EU’s Out-Of-Control Intelligence Services (That Don’t Exist, Officially)
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter
Brussels, the center of gravity of the European Union and seat of NATO Headquarters, not only teems with lobbyists, diplomats, military personnel, bureaucrats, politicians, Americans, and other weird characters from around the world, but also with spies.
“Brussels is one of the largest spy capitals in the world,” said Alain Winants, head of the Belgian State Security Service VSSE. He guesstimated that there’d be “several hundred” plying their trade at any one time, chasing after a broad array of topics, from trade issues to security policies.
Yet officially, the EU itself doesn’t have an intelligence service of its own. It’s dependent on the national intelligence services of the member states that supply it with “finished intelligence.” Officially. In reality, it has been building an intelligence apparatus of six services so far, some of them brand new, populated already by 1,300 specialists. But because they’re officially not conducting direct covert operations – though they do go overseas, including to Libya during the Arab Spring! – they simply deny being intelligence services.
Thus, four of them have finagled to escape democratic oversight and control by the European Parliament. Even in the US, the Intelligence Community is accountable to the Congress. Not so in the EU. As everything else in the EU bureaucracy, these services – the newest dating back to 2011 – are constantly growing, assuming more functions, responsibilities, and power, with vast and ever expanding databases at their fingertips, tied into a dense network of other intelligence services. And it’s just the beginning.
Some Members of Parliament are getting antsy and want to rein them in. Martin Ehrenhauser, independent MP from Austria, and member of the Subcommittee on Security and Defense Policy, is one of the ringleaders; and in his blog post, he details some of the issues.
Since its founding, the EU has been building its own spy programs, often triggered by specific needs, in an “ad-hoc” manner “without strategy” and without a “coherent concept” about its structure, methods, and people, he writes. This “EU intelligence community” saw its first steps in 1993 with the founding of Europol, the only intelligence service established by treaty, and thus the only one with a legitimate basis. Between the prolific years of 2000 and 2004, four additional intelligence units were cobbled together by the unelected European Council. And another one in 2011.
Parliament, emasculated by design in the hyper-democratic manner of the EU, was never given an opportunity to be involved. The logic? Since these entities receive only “finished intelligence” from national services, democratic oversight would rest with national parliaments, not with the European Parliament. Alas, these EU intelligence services are gathering their own intelligence to an ever greater degree. Hence, Ehrenhauser writes, the idea that the EU receives 100% of its information from national intelligence services is a “fallacy.”
The EU intelligence services function similarly to their national counterparts: they collect information, often overseas, analyze it, and transmit it to policy makers. These products can be classified EU TOP SECRET. The mere fact that they might not use covert operations directly to obtain the information, Ehrenhauser writes, is “not sufficient to deny the very existence of the intelligence services and therefore the necessity of democratic controls by the European Parliament.”
Of the six services, only Europol (intelligence and law enforcement) and Frontex (external borders) are subject to some parliamentary oversight. The remaining four – the Intelligence Analysis Center (IntCen), the Satellite Center (SatCen), the Intelligence Directorate (IntDir), and the Situation Room (crisis monitoring) – are beyond democratic controls.
All four have been rolled into the European External Action Service (EEAS), which itself was founded in 2011. Some of them don’t even publish their budgets. Though they’re still small, given their youth, they’re destined to grow just like Europol has been growing over its 20 years of existence. They’re already getting tangled up in “ever more complex decision-making structures with diffuse responsibilities,” Ehrenhauser writes, and they’re making “sweeping decisions far away from the voter.”
So he demands oversight by the European Parliament “at all levels.” It’s not like they haven’t tried. Well, one tiny bit. While Parliament – unique among democracies – can’t initiate legislation, it does have some control over the purse strings. So there was an initiative in the budget committee to force EEAS to disclose the budgets of these four entities. It would have provided a modicum of say and transparency. But it was voted down in the committee.
What kind of Parliament decides to abrogate its responsibilities? What kind of lawmaker votes for continued ignorance and powerlessness in face of what someday will be a massive intelligence apparatus with unknown budgets, ill-defined limits, and the mission to serve its master, the European Council? Monsters have been created on this basis. Another victory for unelected Eurocrats and their armies of functionaries that plod forward in their unsteady manner, hell-bent on implementing their vision of a mega-state encumbered only slightly by the somewhat inconvenient veneer of democracy.
Meanwhile, hunger is spreading from its traditional strongholds in the global south to depression-hit Southern Europe. In Greece, reports are growing of children having to scrounge for food from classmates, while in Spain city dwellers have become inured to the spectacle of people rummaging in trash cans for a bite to eat. But there’s a reason. Read.... Starving the World for Power and Profit: The Global Agribusiness Model
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Parliament, emasculated by design in the hyper-democratic manner of the EU, was never given an opportunity to be involved. The logic? Since these entities receive only “finished intelligence” from national services, democratic oversight would rest with national parliaments, not with the European Parliament.
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No. It is conceived on an 'american' blue print.
'Americanism' relies on a two levels authority to push on projects.
The two levels are played one against the other to buy time until a point of no return is reached and facing a fait accompli is the only outcome.
It is another of the specificities of the 'american' system.
For example, 'americans' enjoy introducing Indians as ruthless, lawless daemons (see the declaration of independence)
Yet the Indians played the 'american' game. They appealed to the judicial system.
When they introduced a plea about illegal settling, they were used to be told that it is was not a State level matter but a Federal matter. When they pushed their plea to the Federal level, they were used to be told that it was not a Federal matter but a State level matter. Of course, at that moment, time was so bought that the 'american' middle class had pushed up on illegal settling and that Indians had no other choice than getting rid of the invaders by themselves. At this moment, it turned out a national matter and the Blues were sent in. Hence the 'american' myth of the calvary arriving late. In fact, the invasion of the new colony (called in 'american' PC language, a territory) was engaged long before by the 'american' middle class.
There is no hyper democratic manner in action in the EU building. Simple, good, plain old sheer 'americanism' in action.
'Americans' follow the 'american' playbook. And part of it, as shown by this 'american' propagandist author, is to avoid pointing fingers at 'americanism'.
Ni Hao,ANAnon. How to write "americanism" in Chinese or spell in Pinyin? Is this word actually used in Chinese Academia?
I for one always appreciate hearing how history is taught in China.
Vomiting endless repeations of your groundless points does not give them substantiation, merely leaves them smelling of vomit.
Your hammering of the pointless points is obliquely to the nailheads pounded, leaving the ground littered with the bent nails of your failurous logics.
Please up the standard of propaganda. This one is definitively too low.
I'm beginning to think he means colonialism when he says americanism.
Maybe that's it ... to tangentially deligitimise whitey's existence outside of European "territory"?
.
Trying to pin down what he means by 'americanism' is not something which can be done by people who were raised to believe that words have meaning. His definition of 'americanism' is about as solid as a Will 'o the wisp.
The only consistency I've seen exhibited is that 'americanism' is anything he considers as not involving himself personally.
An attempt at defining it mathematically would look something like this:
'americanism' = Universe - AnAnonymous
I see ... a non-finite bit, that thinks finite is real, sustains its fractured mind via oozing rejection towards infinity ...
That would explain a few things.
Could you imagine being ran by a bunch of unelected assholes? At least in the US we get to choose between selected assholes.
This bunch is likely more akin to the keystone cops than the gestapo.
Brussels is not the EU. Its Nato. And Nato is US and UK controlled.
The future capitol of the EU is Strasbourg located in the three country corner Germany, France, Switzerland ; close to Italy too. This is where the European parliament has its residence as well as the highest EU courts.
Brussels became important for the EU after the UK joined it. The Brits and the US were pressing for a location which is better under their control. So Brussels is one can say the administrative center of an organisation in transition. As long as the original plan ( to create a political union) of the mayor founding nations (Germany, France, Italy) is not completely executed Brussels is important.
Strasbourg is located in France. And France was since de Gaule not a Nato member, it was only associated but there are no American or English trops on its soil. De Gaule throwed them out while in Germany there are English and US troops stationed. Sarkozy the CIA representative in France brought France back into Nato but still now there are no official US troops in France stationed. France and Syria are the only countries surrounding the Mediterrain Sea housing no US military bases, Funny isnt it.
As a matter of fact Germany is the place where some of the US headquarters are located such as Africom, Southcom etc. Its full under US control. The Germans can not make one fart without the US knows it long before. Its an occupied territory with full control not only over the mainstream media, the CIA is everwhere where important things are happening in German politics.
However, the system initiated in Germany by the US was intended to fend off the rise of a central power in Germany again after the war. And the Germans fulfilled the US/UK plan close to perfection (as one could expect). But this is now the problem for the US and the Brits. Its much easier to control a central controlled government than a country with regional and local power distribution such as Germany. Not even the police and the secret services are central controlled. This explains in part the wiggle room of Germany. Things became again more complicted when Germany became united again.
Having theses things in mind how can one get the idea, that these secret services in Brussels are controlled by the EU.
Things are heading clearly forward to a political union the USE. And the capitol is going to be Strasbourg. That is an undisputed thing within the Eurozone, I might say with in the whole EU except UK. And thats why the UK is leaving the EU or better to say is staying behind as an associated member.
But Brussels is on the long run a thing of the past. Things will be build-up from the bottom new in Strasbourg and Brussels is going to dry out. The only thing what is holding Brusels together is Nato but as we all know Nato is also in a deep crisis. It stands and falls with the US empire.
"The future capitol of the EU is Strasbourg located in the three country corner Germany, France, Switzerland ; close to Italy too."
No, the future capital of Europe is going to be Makkah al-Mukarramah (aka Mecca). /s
So let's see, a secret police that is only "overseen" by the evil elite who designed the system? Got it.
What's planned for the EU. Depression, social unrest, confiscation of assets. Will lead to. Economic disaster,open borders ,revolution & anarchy. Collapse of the economic system. Control through chaos. Satan at work.
It is like in Europe we were fighting oppression by royalty, church, state and runaway ideologies for nothing all these centuries. You get rid of one oppressive system and another one pops up.
And that, is the fatal flaw of coerced collectivism. It can only ever lead to tyranny. Worse yet, as compared to individuals with finite lifespans, collective institutions can outlive your fight against them.
Ooooh, at least one of those intelligence "agents" will figure out he can make some extra coin by doing a little wet work because he will have the "cover" of is employment ID. Also I imagine some of those agents are already taking money from states that are hostile to the west to pass on information and feed false data. Old Chinese war rules, you have to put spies on your spies, their very nature makes them untrustworthy.
"you have to put spies on your spies"
Paranoid old Saddam understood that well. He had 4 layers of "spies on spies".
The Shah neglected that on his SAVAK and they ran out of control, with private extortion rackets everywhere. More than anything, this is what made the middle class support the Khomeini revolution.
Ceausescu lost control of Securitate, the Romanian secret service. They betrayed and shot him and his wife on Christmas day. Now they own Romania.
Running on inertia, and that runs out at some point.
I've been thinking just that about the economy for a few years now. It's so complex and interrelated that it takes time to really loose its inertia. People buy businesses and equipment and they cant just stop, they have to flog a dead horse to try and pay wages and bills, to they fight on right to the end. But all the indicators suggest that's what's occurring. So much record spending and it dies on the vine anyway, so much printing and they struggle to even raise an inflation pulse, demand is so dead. Best they can manage is to avoid a deflation slide, due to the lack of demand, by filling inventory overflow for a recovery, but it ain't there. While still shoveling toxic crap on to tax-payer tabs, and calling it all, "good governance" and "rule of law".
But economy is an inertia reservoir, and that reservoir is steadily being emptying, and liquidity is not what's in that reservoir, you can't print and replace what's in that reservoir.
I can rightfully say that it is not often I see non-Economists that actually understand what the economy really is. It's rare enough to meet Economists that understand it these days.
When political & banking jurisdictions scale up to such a scale they always become bad news.
You see the worst of the worst can move into the very large cracks within the new political apparatus.
Smaller political units are normally forced into this vice because of major economic crisis.
The local domestic elite fear a loss of their money claims and do everything in their power to get closer to the spider.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_scheme
This same (see above) phenomenon can be seen today in Ireland on a extreme and somewhat farcical scale.
You can find me most any night at the AA coffee and doughnut table. I'm outta there on the announcement of the 7th tradition.
OK. You used European and Intelligence Services in a single sentence. I respectfully and strongly disagree.
"Common Purpose is part of an extensive European Union espionage network in the UK. One of the senior spy masters in that network was Commissar Sarah Lambert, Head of Political Intelligence, EU Office in London.
The EU intelligence and monitoring teams are charged with seeing how well the EU's plans are doing and reporting on anti-EU activists."
http://www.stopcp.com/cpmindmap.php
"Muz Lambert now calls herself "Acting Head of Representation". This is what the page looked like on 2008-06-03. She called herself "Head of Political Intelligence". Not much of her job description will have changed."
http://www.stopcp.com/euspies20080603.php
Hopefully, it won't be too long before the whole fucking lot of them are out of a job.
With a bit of luck, and possibly a revolution, they won't be in a position to spend any of more taxpayers money even on their own "retirement" golden handshakes or pensions.
Fuck EU.
"Even in the US, the Intelligence Community is accountable to the Congress."
This point can be argued.
Yes, Gunga, after the international banksters were able to retake control over the USA, more and more the American politicians became puppets, which allowed the same things to happen in the USA, as were described in this article:
"What kind of [Congress] decides to abrogate its responsibilities? What kind of lawmaker votes for continued ignorance and powerlessness in face of what someday will be a massive intelligence apparatus with unknown budgets, ill-defined limits, and the mission to serve its master? ... Monsters have been created on this basis."
The USA is already Monstrous! Psychotic laws about "national security" have enabled the best organized criminals, that were able to effectively take over control of the government, to be able to abuse the powers of the secret police to do anything. The European Union is obviously headed down the same path towards being ruled by the banksters from behind the scenes, while the vast majority of people end up being worse off than the slaves in past societies.
I say "worse off" because the older systems of social slavery needed its slaves. The newer systems of social slavery do not need its human slaves, since computers and machines can replace them. Therefore, the path we are on now is to create an utterly inhumane and runaway psychotic secret police system, whose task will be to supervise the systematic genocides and democides of the majority of the world's population.
As always, the only theoretically better solutions to the chronic political problems would be to run those death controls better, using more information in ways arising with higher consciousness. However, we are clearly headed the other way, since democracy is dying. After the banksters took over control of the money supply, then "democracy" became nothing more than a pathetic fake, or a cruel joke.
The real bankster dominated government needs psychotic national security apparatus, or secret police, in order to carry through their agenda. The longer term tragedy is that the monsters that are being created in those ways will eventually destroy their creators too.
We are looking at the runaway triumph of frauds backed by force. The development of secret police is to protect the "secret property," which is the possession of property that was based on frauds. Almost our entire civilization is now operated on fraudulent fiat money, which is used to assert the ownership of property.
Both the USA and the emerging European Union are runaway systems of organized lies, operating organized robberies, in which the vast majority of people have been marginalized. The vast majority of people are participating less and less in the political processes, since the reality is that democracy has already been destroyed. Enough of the people have already been reduced to Zombie Sheeple that the puppet politicians are easily able to continue to implement the banksters' agenda.
Under that agenda, the majority of people who will not own significant property are no longer going to be needed as slaves. Therefore, the vast majority of people who acted like sheep, who were routinely fleeced in the past, are going to to systematically slaughtered off in the future. The European secret police, as they develop, will probably, like the American secret police, be engaged in false flag terrorism, in order to amplify the ways that their future abuses of power will become even more unaccountable.
As far as I can tell, we are perhaps nearing the end of any ability to even speak about these things publicly. It seems already too late for democracy to save itself, since the truth about the social facts about any of these trends can not stop them from being runaways. I WISH that there was some believable way that the "democracy" could save itself, since that is the only means whereby a greater use of information, enabling a higher consciousness, might mitigate where we are going. If we have more accountability, then the abuses of power might be ameliorated.
However, the BASIC systems were built upon the foundation of the banksters' power to make the public money supply out of nothing, as debts. That BASIC social insanity is now so far advanced, that there are no realistic and practical solutions. The economic problems of the European Union reaching debt insanity numbers are going to be matched by the emergence of a democidal secret police, which will probably make the old Soviet Union look relatively innocuous in comparison.
We may well still entertain the vainglorious hope that enough people would wake up to the ideas which are routinely featured on Zero Hedge, in order that enough people would do something about stopping the runaway social insanities that we are in now ...
I am not aware of any other irrational hope which I can believe in. At least that one seems remotely possible, although it appears to be extremely improbable, since it would require a series of political miracles.
Was with you until you said Democracy was dying. My son, this is Democracy in action.
+420. Everytime you post. Where do you get this insight? Is it beamed into your pineal during one of your super consciousness field journeys? I need to read more of what you're reading. Seriously. I'm definitely smoking as much, if not more...
pass the good stuff! thanks R M...
Gunga
Only because the AG has his head up O's ass.
I thought it's to a committee from both houses? Though the SS belongs to the Treasury and is treated differently, if I remember right
Congress has no clue what the Intelligence groups in the US do.
Undercover gestapo!
Time for a visit from Major Hochstaeter, perhaps?
So the corrupt EU elite have their own secret police, not much of a suprise there. The EU has been paying lobby groups in all states to promote the EU they also use funds to undermine parties they dislike in the EU with all sorts of dirty tricks employed by them. This worked well in the good days but has become more difficult to push these days, wait till the UK has the proposed referendum on the EU, serious money will be spent to get the result they want. Looking at the Irish referendums on the Lisbon and Nice treaties significant funds were expended on vote manipulation and on dirty tricks. We should keep in mind that the EU is not supposed to influence countries that are voting on local or EU issues but they have and will simply because they are getting desperate.
“What we should grasp, however, from the lessons of European history is that, first, there is nothing necessarily benevolent about programmes of European integration; second, the desire to achieve grand utopian plans often poses a grave threat to freedom; and third, European unity has been tried before, and the outcome was far from happy.”
— Margaret Thatcher,
actually it's the opposite effect. plenty of european lobbies that finance and propagate a fundamentally federal view of the EU because it gets them more customers
even the UKIP party somehow helps in giving this idea of a strong, federal EU with plenty of powers and might
you know that you are quoting the Lady Baroness that wanted to keep the two Germanies separated, on a quintessential British urge to "Divide Et Impera" regarding the Continent?
What's next, getting back Hannover and Calais in the United Kingdom?
There was a fairly significant British reason for wanting to keep Germany in two parts. It was, after all, the country that within the last century had started not one but two massive wars that killed millions of Brits, as well as tens of millions of others. People are supposed to learn from experience.
Perhaps in your imagination Calais has a similar history. Pretty sure the Brits don't see it that way.
you mean that the logic of empire did not apply to the British one? That Brits and French are, together with Americans, the "nice guys" in all history, while the Germans and the Russians (throw in the Chinese and Japanese for good measure) the "forever black hats"?
people are supposed to learn from history, yes. learn a few things about what really started World War One (and it's sequel)
the dynamics are still there, if you look beyond the easely consumed jingoism of "Britannia rules the waves"
Forensic History v History
Lies, omitted data and cover stories; 24/7. Mark Twain's apt description of history as "Mississippi of lies" is still workable. It warned us of our present time situation.
When a new subject called "forensic-history" becomes widely recognized , perhaps fairnes/justice will rise to be a new kind of guide for to benefit mankind.
The 0.1% arrived via their own creation of pseudo-history. A billionaire uses it to justify his status because there is no other way .
h/t Robert Eisenman noting history v. forensic history
What a fucking monster.
A hydra.
They are building a second US of fucking A in Europe...................i.e. a shithole.
Unions are always bad news ALWAYS.
It started with the UK..................
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1707
Its always comes down to a very rough battle to gain total power over EVERYTHING.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh8m-eyykHM
The Dork of Cork,
Union is only a work. I lived in London during last days of Reagan for about 4 years. I could not understand ( and still don't) why British Kingdom was called "United" . It never was or will be.
@Rusty
I am not a extreme nationalist.
Too much historic water has flowed under the bridge and all that.
I would not be against a union with Great Britian if we had a proper fiat king who would rout those banking bastards out.
ergo you'd be a fan of Draghi if he'd just print like a Bernank
Drag-hee will, don't worry- hasn't got started yet
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/5/9_ECB...
Another Godamm Sucks lackey, like Carney.
my point is that Dork of Cork wants "greenbacks", i.e. a "fiat king", i.e. even The Bernank is not enough Bernank for him
Bernank is not producing new money.................he is only sustaining the value of previous credit creation.
In fact he can't produce greenbacks................
CBs don't do that.
Besides the US would lose its reserve status.
Anyway , even under gold standards non Imperial currencies could print and devalue.
They kept sov power over their internal systems
The Bernank does not print greenbacks...............some money goes back to the treasury but the treasury is bent also.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_III_of_England
Richard the III got some bad press from the Tudor propagandists because he transfered some real money from the south of England to the North...............
Lets face it - London just wanted surplus goods wastelands for its interest bearing money.
In the same fashion Washington and New York get the fiat money right back at them.
Looking back now - pre tudor times were good for Ireland , after however..........................
"They are building a second US of fucking A in Europe." It looks worse than that to me! They are building a second Soviet Union, in terms of its unaccountable ability to abuse power.
Indeed.