What is "SECRET UE" anyway?
Today @ 08:44 SEPT 24,12 By Andrew Rettman
BRUSSELS - EU countries have a protocol
for sharing official "secrets." But people's motives for classifying EU
files are not always pure and the number of really hush hush papers in
Brussels is tiny.The EU Council - where member states meet to talk about everything
from the euro-crisis to Iran oil sanctions - has five levels of document
security: LIMITE UE, RESTREINT UE, CONFIDENTIEL UE, SECRET UE and TRES
SECRET UE.The "UE" means "Union Europeene" - by custom, the label is always in
French, even though the "UE" bit is normally dropped on document
markings.LIMITE is for day-to-day internal papers which are often published
later on. Examples are: a statement by Council chief Herman Van Rompuy
before he makes it, draft EU summit conclusions or a draft EU policy
before ministers rubber-stamp it.Any EU official or diplomat can read
them, email them, print them or take them home and people frequently
leak them to press.It does not mean the leaks are benign - advance notice of an EU deal on, say, bank supervision could move markets or trigger lobbying designed to harm it. Meanwhile, non-EU diplomats who get their hands on internal EU papers use the Council's own guide to labelling to check if the documents are authentic.
The red line is RESTREINT - if you leak one, you might lose your job."I would never cross that line. I wouldn't even think about it. It needs to be properly declassified," one EU contact said.The Council last March spelled out what the higher labels mean and how to protect classified papers. It gave some more detail in a follow-up memo last May.It said RESTREINT material could be "disadvantageous to the interests of the European Union" if it comes out. It might "adversely affect" diplomatic relations, "distress" individuals or "facilitate" crime and "improper gain."CONFIDENTIEL information could "harm ... essential [EU] interests." It might prompt "formal protest or other sanctions" by non-EU countries. It might also "damage" EU "security or intelligence operations" and "undermine the financial viability of major organisations."
SECRET could "seriously harm" interests. It might "raise international tensions" or "threaten life" or "public order."TRES SECRET could cause "exceptionally grave prejudice" to EU wellbeing. A breach might cause "widespread loss of life," threaten "internal stability" or "cause severe long-term damage to the EU economy."
The rules on protecting documents indicate how sexy the contents might be.RESTREINT files are supposed to be sent on an encrypted system called Cortesy, which is cut off from the Internet.If you want to see CONFIDENTIEL, SECRET or TRES SECRET texts you have to be security-vetted by your home country's intelligence service.They check your police records, your medical history and your bank account for starters. If you drink too much, if you were part of a "subversive" group in your student days or if your relatives live in a country that might threaten them to get to you, chances are you will get a No.
CONFIDENTIEL and SECRET files are to be sent on a fancier encryption system called Solan. TOP SECRET papers are hand-delivered by a vetted courier in a sealed envelope marked only with the recipient's name.The high-level documents are kept in safes in rooms with electronic locks which log who goes in and out and which are watched by CCTV.Secure areas for reading them files are also "Tempest-protected" - insulated so that eavesdropping devices in neighbouring buildings cannot decode electro-magnetic radiation which comes off computer screens and wires.If you leak any of this stuff, you might go to jail.
'It's a subjective decision'
EUobserver spoke to several EU officials and former officials with access to SECRET or TRES-SECRET-level papers to learn more on what the labels mean in practice.It learned that EU officials are not quite sure.The author of a document decides which label to use and his head-of-unit or director-level superior checks it before it goes out. But even senior people can get it wrong."It's not because you just joined the service that you tend to overclassify or that after several years you underclassify because you think it's all business as usual. It's not an algorithm. You don't tick boxes. At the end of the day, it's a subjective decision which comes down to how used you are to handling sensitive information, how well you've been trained and how good your hierarchy is," one EU contact explained.He said people who underclassify tend to do it because they want a bigger readership for their work. People who overclassify do it to look important or just because they are twitchy by nature."I remember a British official who was so secretive that he used to hide his computer screen when colleagues walked by. But other British officials aren't like that," he added.Another EU contact noted that Austrian and French officials are known for overclassifying. "Sometimes I open a document and I think: 'What? You've put me to all this trouble of decrypting, registering, re-crypting and re-registering for this bullshit?'," he said.A third contact added: "I've seen two different versions of the same document, each with a different classification."A look at some (partly) declassified files gives an idea of the niceties of the craft.Four ex-RESTREINT files concern: a project to train justice officials in Georgia; plans for an EU police mission in Congo; a decision on an EU-Latin-America foundation; and an annual survey of civilian missions abroad.One ex-CONFIDENTIEL paper is about stopping a massacre in Uganda.There is a clear difference between RESTREINT and CONFIDENTIEL. The most sensitive RESTREINT item is a mandate for EU police in Congo to combat sexual violence. But the Uganda paper talks about France's "brigadier general Thonier" who is to deploy "1,000 armoured/mechanised troops" in two months' time to snatch control of an airport.The difference between RESTREINT and LIMITE is less obvious.The ex-RESTREINT Georgia paper records banalities, such as "sets of furniture have been delivered and assembled in the HQ and co-locations." Meanwhile, one ex-LIMITE paper from 2001 talks about prospects for EU intelligence sharing. Another LIMITE file lists the EU's beefs with Russia shortly after the Georgia-Russia war in 2008.EUobserver's contacts added a bit of flesh to the official terminology.They said RESTREINT files normally cover: operational plans for EU civilian/police missions; updates on security risks at the EU's foreign embassies; EU ambassadors' political reports; details of upcoming sanctions on small countries such as Belarus or Burma; reports on contacts with dissidents who visit the EU capital or in their home country.CONFIDENTIEL texts would be: plans for EU military missions; sanctions decisions on important countries such as China or Iran; reports containing EU officials and diplomats' personal judgements on third countries' VIPs; details of talks by EU diplomats in the Political and Security Committee; discussions in the Council's counter-terrorism group; some reports on terrorism and foreign crises by IntCen, the European External Action Service's (EEAS) intelligence-sharing office; the EU's negotiating position in bilateral trade talks.SECRET papers would include: information about EU or non-EU ministers or leaders which could be used against them; reports with names of foreign officials who leak sensitive information; the EU's negotiating position on a major international agreement designed to generate wealth for the Union; most IntCen reports; details of the "P5+1" anti-nuclear-proliferation talks with Iran; details of "Quartet" talks on the Middle East Peace Process.TRES SECRET documents could be: advance warning of a coup d'etat in a foreign country; the cryptographic keys to EU communications networks; information which exposes high-level intelligence sources."If [Russian foreign minister Sergei] Lavrov has a secret meeting with the Iranian foreign minister and they know that we know, then they know they have a mole, that we are plugged into a certain level of their decision-making," one EU contact said."Imagine the UK has the codes to read the diplomatic cables of another country. One blunder and that country changes its codes and you never get that access again," another EU source noted.Zooming out of the Council, the European Commission does things differently, creating extra scope for confusion.
The commission - which circulates commercially-valuable files - uses Council tags and said a "significant majority" of its sensitive documents are marked no higher than RESTREINT. But some departments have invented their own labels as well. Its anti-trust office, DG Comp, uses COMP OPERATIONS and COMP SPECIAL HANDLING.
The commission also uses different encryption systems, called NCN (New Communications System) and Rue (Restreint Union Europeene) to send documents.The EEAS uses NCN and Rue as well as Cortesy and Solan. It also uses Nato systems for contact with foreign delegations.
Saving face
Meanwhile, another motive for classification would make a pro-transparency activist grind his teeth.One EU source said: "It may have happened that a document was classified because it made us look bad. But this is not something regular."Another EU contact said face-saving secrecy is normal.He gave the example that if Germany, for instance, was processing nuclear waste despite Chancellor Angela Merkel's commitments not to, the information would be marked up partly for security reasons (to prevent protests at the site) and partly to protect Merkel's reputation."If something is embarrassing, then it is a secret. This is what they call raison d'etat. If you don't like it - tough, grow up," he said.EU embarrassment is not always a bad thing, however.A RESTREINT report on Israeli settler violence leaked this year showed that EU ambassadors on the ground favour tougher action than EU ministers in the Council.EUobserver in 2010 saw a RESTREINT report about EU-Russia human rights talks. EU diplomats at the time said it was classified to protect victims' names. But the report also showed that EU officials think the talks amout to little, even though EU leaders say the opposite in public.When German journalist Hans-Martin Tillack in 2002 exposed fraud in the commission, its anti-fraud office, Olaf, had marked one relevant document and a second important paper as "CONFIDENTIAL." But the scandal helped to clean things up instead of harming "essential" EU interests.
Is that all?
The minute number of top-level texts in circulation also testifies to lack of trust between EU countries and institutions.Contacts estimated the Council sees between 600 to 1,000 new RESTREINT documents each year, 250 to 300 CONFIDENTIEL files and 30 to 100 SECRET ones.They said the number of TOP SECRET texts is between two and six.The figures come with a warning: the more sensitive the material, the more it is shared on a "need to know" basis. Some of EUobserver's contacts who were cleared to read TOP SECRET files had not seen a single one in over 10 years of work.One source joked that since Council chief Van Rompuy "isn't building a nuclear weapon, isn't fighting a war and doesn't run covert espionage programmes" the EU does not have hard information of its own.Another contact said EU countries which do all of these things do not see EU institutions as the right place to talk about them. "We [EU institutions] don't have secrets because member states basically don't trust us ... If Israel attacks Iran, the first time that we hear about it will be on CNN," he said.A third source recalled how hard it was to get EU countries to share even low-level intelligence in the early days of IntCen 10 years ago."Countries wouldn't share because they thought what they had was too good to share ... Spain would not send information on Colombia. Germany would not send information about its business activities in Kazakhstan," he said.He noted that the flow of information between EU capitals depends on human relationships as well as protocols."Who are these people [from Brussels]? Can I trust them? The world of intelligence, the world of secrets is very much like that. Who do you know? Who do you trust? ... It's all about people," he said.This article is the second one in a series of EUobserver investigative reports on EU information security. The next one - entitled "Multi-million-euro market for inside EU knowledge" - will look at lobbying and journalism in Brussels and will be published on 1 OctoberUNDERSTANDING WORLD GOVERNMENT
http://www.womensgroup.org/
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=504526035342184251
BANK OF INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENT PRESS
http://www.bis.org/events/agm2009/pcvideo.htm
BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS PAPER 17 REGIONAL AREAS OF THE WORLD AND CURRENCIES
http://www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/bispap17.pdf
BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS SITE
http://www.bis.org/
G-10 PRESS RELEASES FROM BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS
http://www.bis.org/list/press_releases/said_12/index.htm
BIS ANNUAL REPORTS
http://www.bis.org/list/press_releases/said_10/index.htm
CENTRAL BANKERS SPEECHES
http://www.bis.org/list/cbspeeches/index.htm
BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS-NEW WORLD ORDER-JULY 10,10 HOURS 1 & 2
http://www.olivetreeviews.org/radio/mp3/
THE BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS IS THE CENTRAL BANK OF THE WORLD THAT LENDS ONLY TO CENTRAL BANKERS AROUND THE GLOBE.THE IMF LENDS TO THE COUNTRIES BANKS OF THE WORLD.BETWEEN THIS BANK AND THE IMF I BELIEVE WILL BE THE BANKS OF THE WORLD.THE IMF THE WORLD BANK AND THE POLICEMAN OF THE IMF THE BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS WHERE WE PAY OUT CAP & TRADE,CLIMATE,ENERGY SCAM TAXES TOO TO PAY FOR THE WORLD GOVERNMENT.THE GLOBAL CURRENCY WILL BE THE SDRS OR SPECIAL DRAWING RIGHTS UNTILL THE EU INVENTS THE WORLD MICROCHIP IMPLANT SYSTEM THEN THE EU WILL MAKE ALL TAKE THE IMPLANT OR BE MURDERED.
The truth about unlimited quantitative easing and what it means for Asia
Learn
why the European Central Bank's so-called 'sterilization' comes with
false advertising.Here's a view from David Carbon, analyst at DBS Group
Research:As we go to press, the Fed deliberates on whether to introduce a
third round of quantitative easing, or QE3. Markets have priced in a
near certainty of this occurring and even were Fed to demur, only the
expected due-date would change. Another chunk of change will likely be
spent, if not this week, then next.Not to be outdone, the ECB has already announced a new bond buying
plan of its own: the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) program. Under
its auspices, the ECB will purchase bonds of struggling Eurozone
economies in ‘unlimited quantities’. This is a new and important step –
it’s the first time the ECB has thrown open its vaults to any and all
comers and the ability to buy bonds in unlimited quantities means that
speculators shorting those same bonds might want to reconsider or at
least stand aside while the ECB train passes.In the event, the balance sheets of the world’s two largest central
banks are about to expand again. How much bigger can they get? They’ve
already doubled or tripled in size. Since Mar08, the Fed’s balance sheet
has grown by 3.1x to USD 2900bn. The increment – $1900-odd billion –
equates to 13% of GDP [1].The ECB’s balance sheet hasn’t grown quite that fast – it’s only
expanded by 2.2x since Mar08. But the ECB’s was bigger to begin with.
Back in Mar08 it was 15% of GDP; today it’s 32% of GDP, thanks to all
kinds of emergency loans and bond purchases (LTRO, ELA, SMP) that can
only be called quantitative easing too. In dollar terms, the ECB’s
balance sheet has expanded by even more than the Fed’s: $2100bn vs
$1900bn [2].If you add it all up, that’s 4 trillion dollars of balance sheet
expansion from the Fed and the ECB. That’s a big number. Now grow it by
QE3 in the US and an ‘unlimited quantity’ in Europe and you get, well,
an even bigger number.Is all this money ever going to bring a US recovery? Is it going to
end the European crisis? And what does another round of QE in the US
and in Europe mean for Asia?In the US, our view is that QE3 won’t hurt. But it’s won’t help
much either. The Fed has been pushing on a string for two years. Pushing
on a longer string doesn’t change much.In Europe, the QE/OMT program has solid chance of doing a lot of
good. This is the ‘big chunk of money’ that was always needed to
‘ringfence’ vulnerable assets and to keep speculators at bay. Keeping
yields on sovereign bonds at manageable levels is critical to keeping
debts from spiralling out of control.But OMT won’t solve the ‘real economy’ side of the problem.
Competitiveness differentials lie at the heart of the debt crisis and
OMT won’t eliminate them. On the contrary, keeping the euro intact
practically guarantees that competitiveness differentials will persist.
Slow growth and painfully high unemployment will remain for a long time,
with or without the OMT. Thus, risks to the euro from this side of the
equation remain as high as ever.What does another burst of QE/OMT mean for Asia? Will all that
money come rushing over to Asia, pushing interest rates down and
currencies, growth and equity markets up? Is Asia looking at 2010 all
over again?
Probably
not. First of all, one should recognize that most of the
injections undertaken by both the Fed and the ECB never went into the
real economy, the money stayed at the central banks in the form of
reserves / deposits. The ECB calls this ‘sterilization’ and they note
that whatever OMT money gets injected into the system will get mopped
right back up again into central bank deposits.This is false
advertising. Banks can withdraw these deposits any
time they wish and put them wherever they want. If voluntarily leaving
money at the central bank is ‘sterilization’, then the Fed’s QE program
has been sterilized even more effectively than the ECB’s – 80% of the
increment in the Fed’s balance sheet since Mar08 has been absorbed by
increases in reserves / deposits. Only 52% of the ECB’s balance sheet
growth has been absorbed this way.Still, the point remains that most of
the QE undertaken on both
sides of the pond isn’t entering the economy. And if it’s not entering
the local economy, it can’t come ‘flooding over to Asia’ a day
later.Does this mean Asia won’t see any inflows in 2013? Not at all.
Inflows have been strong in recent years and they should rise modestly
in 2013. But it’s not coming from QE at the Fed or the ECB. It’s coming
from investors seeing growth and opportunity to profit from it in Asia.
And it ebbs sharply when those investors see risks such as a break-up of
the euro.To the extent that the ECB plan lowers the risk of a break-up –
and
it certainly does in the short-run – flows (and stronger growth) will
come back to Asia. Not from QE per se but from the perception of lowered
risk that QE brings.
http://sbr.com.sg/economy/news/truth-about-unlimited-quantitative-easing-and-what-it-means-asia
Unelected European commissioner for the environment calls for de-industrialization of the West and centralization of power to govern free markets
Speaking at a recent European summit on the future of plastics in the
world economy, the European Commission’s “green” commissioner Janez
Potočnik stated that markets can and must be governed by the European
Commission if the earth’s resources are to keep up with global
population growth.In a transcript of his speech
on the EC’s website, marked “check before delivery”, Potočnik quoted
his “good friend” Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United
Nations Environment Programme, as saying the idea of governing markets
was agreed upon when Agenda 21 was formally created in 1992 at the
original Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro:“Twenty years ago, we agreed what to do, now we have the tools to do
it. If we do not go into the heart of economic policy, we will meet here
at Rio+40 even more culpable. Markets are social constructs. They are
not a force like gravity. They can be governed.”In these couple of sentences effect, the UNEP Secretary-General
reveals several things. First, that current economic disparity offers
“the tools” to roll out an agenda (21) which was already “agreed” upon
in the early 1990s; second, that our dear Secretary-General wants to go
“into the heart of economic policy”; and third, that from the onset of
Agenda 21 the idea was to govern free markets.In response to the quote by his “good friend” at the UN, the European
environmental commissioner piled some more absolutism onto this already
formidable stack of proposals by stating:“Yes they can be governed and they must be governed. And for that we
need also your help and your support. Your vision which goes beyond the
short term interests and takes into account the unavoidable changes
needed in our production and consumption patterns.”, the commissioner
said.
We may not be wholly surprised that the European Commission’s communication department wants this particular speech checked before delivery to the press. The commissioner is after all quite upfront about the prospect of a de-industrialization campaign under the guidance of unelected commissions. His talk is littered with words as “governed”, “growth models”- not to mention “overpopulation.”O yes, the “green” commissioner starts out his speech by quoting population matters patron Jonathan Porritt, who wrote: “‘Human population growth and the per-capita consumption rate underlie all of the other present drivers for global change“. I know that Jonathan (Porritt) has long argued for attention to population and family planning in relation to sustainability, particularly as patron of the “Population Matters” charity. But this was quite an astounding statement… I repeat; it would “underlie all of the other present drivers for global change.”, Potočnik said.The rest of Potočnik’s speech was related to the issue at hand, namely the future of plastics and what to do about all those consumers, especially in the West.“I’m afraid that one cannot govern the world of the 21st Century without taking into account the longer term picture and consequences. It would be simply self-destructive. We need industry and investors on board. Rather than fighting the power of capital, or trying to legislate away its environmental downsides, we need to harness market forces to turn economies onto a track that is sustainable economically, financially, socially and environmentally. We need green economics… also in the plastic industry.”The commissioner also stressed that for him “this is the new industrial policy. We must recognize that our future competitiveness will depend increasingly – perhaps overwhelmingly – on our ability to do more with less.”More with less. Agenda 21 in a nutshell. More carbon taxes, less freedom. Or: more resources, less people. It’s important to point your attention to the pre-planned nature of this agenda unfolding, and the population-aspect dominating this agenda. A 1991 policy paper prepared for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) outlines a strategy for the transfer of wealth in name of the environment to be implemented in the course of 35 to 40 years. As it turns out, it is a visionary paper describing phase by phase the road to world dictatorship under Agenda 21. As the author Ignacy Sachs states in the policy paper:
“To be meaningful, the strategies should cover the time-span of several decades. Thirty-five to forty years seems a good compromise between the need to give enough time to the postulated transformations and the uncertainties brought about by the lengthening of the time-span.”
In his paper The Next 40 Years: Transition Strategies to the Virtuous Green Path: North/South/East/Global, Sachs accurately describes not only the intended time-span to bring about a global society, but also what steps should be taken to ensure “population stabilization”:“In order to stabilize the populations of the South by means other than wars or epidemics, mere campaigning for birth control and distributing of contraceptives has proved fairly inefficient.”In the first part of the (in retrospect) bizarrely accurate description of current events as they unfold, Sachs points out redistribution of wealth is the only viable path towards population stabilization and- as he calls it- a “virtuous green world”. Sachs:“The way out from the double bind of poverty and environmental disruption calls for a fairly long period of more economic growth to sustain the transition strategies towards the virtuous green path of what has been called in Stockholm ecodevelopement and has since changed its name in Anglo-Saxon countries to sustainable development.”“(…) a fair degree of agreement seems to exist, therefore, about the ideal development path to be followed so long as we do not manage to stabilize the world population and, at the same time, sharply reduce the inequalities prevailing today.”, the professor states.“The bolder the steps taken in the near future”, Sachs asserts, “the shorter will be the time span that separates us from a steady state. Radical solutions must address to the roots of the problem and not to its symptoms. Theoretically, the transition could be made shorter by measures of redistribution of assets and income.”
Sachs points to the political difficulties of such proposals being implemented (because free humanity tends to distrust any national government let alone transnational government to redistribute its well-earned wealth). He therefore proposes these measures to be implemented gradually, following a meticulously planned strategy:
“The pragmatic prospect is one of transition extending itself over several decades.”In the second sub-chapter “The Five Dimensions of Ecodevelopment”, professor Sachs sums up the main dimensions of this carefully outlined move to make Agenda 21 a very real future prospect. The first dimension he touches upon is “Social Sustainability”:“The aim is to build a civilization of being within greater equity in asset and income distribution, so as to improve substantially the entitlements of the broad masses of population and of reduce the gap in standards of living between the have and the have nots.”This of course means, reducing the standards of living in “The North” (U.S., Europe) and upgrading those of the developing nations (“The South and The East”). This would have to be realized through what Sachs calls “Economic Sustainability”: “made possible by a more efficient allocation and management of resources and a steady flow of public and private investment.”The third dimension described by the professor is “Ecological Sustainability” which, among other things, limits “the consumption of fossile fuels and other easily depletable or environmentally harmful products, substituting them by renewable and/or plentiful and environmentally friendly resources, reducing the volume of pollutants by means of energy and resource conservation and recycling and, last but not least, promoting self-constraint in material consumption on part of the rich countries and of the privileged social strata all over the world.”To make this happen Sachs stresses the need of “defining the rules for adequate environmental protection, designing the institutional machinery and choosing the mix of economic, legal and administrative instruments necessary for the implementation of environmental policies.”In order to realize such a dramatic new direction for the world, Sachs once again stresses the importance of incremental implementation. A matter of boiling the frog slowly as opposed to throwing the poor animal into a boiling-hot cooking pan:“Even if we know where we want to get, the operational question is how do we proceed to put humankind on the virtuous path of genuine development, socially responsible and in harmony with nature. It is submitted that UNCED 92 should give considerable attention to the formulation of transition strategies that could become the central piece of the Agenda 21.”
This is the word- Agenda 21: the UN strategy for redistributing the wealth accumulated by the “North” in order to create a completely “balanced” world society- under auspices of the United Nations of course and the private central banks controlling it. This can only come about by destroying the middle-class. A sudden redistribution and industrialization would not do- for the middle-class would undoubtedly rise in defiance against it. Therefore, Sachs argues for an incremental and carefully planned dissolution of the middle-class phase by phase:“To be meaningful, the strategies should cover the time-span of several decades. Thirty-five to forty years seems a good compromise between the need to give enough time to the postulated transformations and the uncertainties brought about by the lengthening of the time-span. The retooling of industries, even in periods of rapid growth, requires ten to twenty years. The restructuration and the expansion of the infrastructures requires several decades and this is a crucially important sector from the point of view of environment.”Then Sachs plunges into his most revealing statement:“However, the single most important reason to consider the transition strategies over a minimum of thirty-five to forty years stems from the non-linearity of these strategies; they should be devised as a succession of changing priorities over time. A good illustration is provided by the population transition. In order to stabilize the populations of the South by means other than wars or epidemics, mere campaigning for birth control and distributing of contraceptives has proved fairly inefficient.”Sachs argues that “an accelerated programme of social and economic development of the rural areas should be the outmost priority in the first phase of a realistic population stabilization scheme.”Who or what is to coordinate all this, according to Sachs, and how exactly is the UN to take control?“The solutions”, says Sachs, “can vary in terms of their boldness and take the form of global, multilateral or bilateral arrangements.” These arrangements should as far as Sachs is concerned ensure “at least partially the automacity of financial transfers by some form of fiscal mechanisms, be it a small income tax or an array of indirect taxes on goods and services whose production and consumption has significant environmental impacts.”Over time, so proposes Sachs, these taxes should increase:“Starting the operation with a one per ten thousand tax and increasing it so as to reach one per thousand in ten to twenty years seems a fairly realistic proposal, the more so that the scheme creates an interesting market for the private enterprises involved in R and D.”Reading all this, the question as to what entity should take charge is not difficult to answer. Sachs:“In order to generate maximum synergies between the national strategies and global action, the United Nations should create a forum for the periodical discussion and evaluation of these strategies and a research, monitoring and flexible planning facility to put them in a global perspective.(…). The forum should have a fair representation of all the main actors involved: governments, parliaments, citizen movements and the business world. Given its importance, it should be lifted from specialized agencies to a central place in the UN system.”This almost literally echoes the recent call by a group of scientists for the upcoming UN Earth Summit to create “a Sustainable Development Council within the UN system to integrate social, economic and environmental policy at the global level.”The underlying, more sinister element of Agenda 21 is of course the concerted effort on the part of the professors and unelected commiczars of this world, through multilateral treaties and regulations, to not only control the populations of the world but to cull them.Jurriaan Maessen is the writer and editor at http://explosivereports.com/
Unelected European “Green” Commissioner Says Markets Must be Governed
Jurriaan Maessen Infowars.com Sept 24, 2012Unelected European commissioner for the environment calls for de-industrialization of the West and centralization of power to govern free markets
We may not be wholly surprised that the European Commission’s communication department wants this particular speech checked before delivery to the press. The commissioner is after all quite upfront about the prospect of a de-industrialization campaign under the guidance of unelected commissions. His talk is littered with words as “governed”, “growth models”- not to mention “overpopulation.”O yes, the “green” commissioner starts out his speech by quoting population matters patron Jonathan Porritt, who wrote: “‘Human population growth and the per-capita consumption rate underlie all of the other present drivers for global change“. I know that Jonathan (Porritt) has long argued for attention to population and family planning in relation to sustainability, particularly as patron of the “Population Matters” charity. But this was quite an astounding statement… I repeat; it would “underlie all of the other present drivers for global change.”, Potočnik said.The rest of Potočnik’s speech was related to the issue at hand, namely the future of plastics and what to do about all those consumers, especially in the West.“I’m afraid that one cannot govern the world of the 21st Century without taking into account the longer term picture and consequences. It would be simply self-destructive. We need industry and investors on board. Rather than fighting the power of capital, or trying to legislate away its environmental downsides, we need to harness market forces to turn economies onto a track that is sustainable economically, financially, socially and environmentally. We need green economics… also in the plastic industry.”The commissioner also stressed that for him “this is the new industrial policy. We must recognize that our future competitiveness will depend increasingly – perhaps overwhelmingly – on our ability to do more with less.”More with less. Agenda 21 in a nutshell. More carbon taxes, less freedom. Or: more resources, less people. It’s important to point your attention to the pre-planned nature of this agenda unfolding, and the population-aspect dominating this agenda. A 1991 policy paper prepared for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) outlines a strategy for the transfer of wealth in name of the environment to be implemented in the course of 35 to 40 years. As it turns out, it is a visionary paper describing phase by phase the road to world dictatorship under Agenda 21. As the author Ignacy Sachs states in the policy paper:
“To be meaningful, the strategies should cover the time-span of several decades. Thirty-five to forty years seems a good compromise between the need to give enough time to the postulated transformations and the uncertainties brought about by the lengthening of the time-span.”
In his paper The Next 40 Years: Transition Strategies to the Virtuous Green Path: North/South/East/Global, Sachs accurately describes not only the intended time-span to bring about a global society, but also what steps should be taken to ensure “population stabilization”:“In order to stabilize the populations of the South by means other than wars or epidemics, mere campaigning for birth control and distributing of contraceptives has proved fairly inefficient.”In the first part of the (in retrospect) bizarrely accurate description of current events as they unfold, Sachs points out redistribution of wealth is the only viable path towards population stabilization and- as he calls it- a “virtuous green world”. Sachs:“The way out from the double bind of poverty and environmental disruption calls for a fairly long period of more economic growth to sustain the transition strategies towards the virtuous green path of what has been called in Stockholm ecodevelopement and has since changed its name in Anglo-Saxon countries to sustainable development.”“(…) a fair degree of agreement seems to exist, therefore, about the ideal development path to be followed so long as we do not manage to stabilize the world population and, at the same time, sharply reduce the inequalities prevailing today.”, the professor states.“The bolder the steps taken in the near future”, Sachs asserts, “the shorter will be the time span that separates us from a steady state. Radical solutions must address to the roots of the problem and not to its symptoms. Theoretically, the transition could be made shorter by measures of redistribution of assets and income.”
Sachs points to the political difficulties of such proposals being implemented (because free humanity tends to distrust any national government let alone transnational government to redistribute its well-earned wealth). He therefore proposes these measures to be implemented gradually, following a meticulously planned strategy:
“The pragmatic prospect is one of transition extending itself over several decades.”In the second sub-chapter “The Five Dimensions of Ecodevelopment”, professor Sachs sums up the main dimensions of this carefully outlined move to make Agenda 21 a very real future prospect. The first dimension he touches upon is “Social Sustainability”:“The aim is to build a civilization of being within greater equity in asset and income distribution, so as to improve substantially the entitlements of the broad masses of population and of reduce the gap in standards of living between the have and the have nots.”This of course means, reducing the standards of living in “The North” (U.S., Europe) and upgrading those of the developing nations (“The South and The East”). This would have to be realized through what Sachs calls “Economic Sustainability”: “made possible by a more efficient allocation and management of resources and a steady flow of public and private investment.”The third dimension described by the professor is “Ecological Sustainability” which, among other things, limits “the consumption of fossile fuels and other easily depletable or environmentally harmful products, substituting them by renewable and/or plentiful and environmentally friendly resources, reducing the volume of pollutants by means of energy and resource conservation and recycling and, last but not least, promoting self-constraint in material consumption on part of the rich countries and of the privileged social strata all over the world.”To make this happen Sachs stresses the need of “defining the rules for adequate environmental protection, designing the institutional machinery and choosing the mix of economic, legal and administrative instruments necessary for the implementation of environmental policies.”In order to realize such a dramatic new direction for the world, Sachs once again stresses the importance of incremental implementation. A matter of boiling the frog slowly as opposed to throwing the poor animal into a boiling-hot cooking pan:“Even if we know where we want to get, the operational question is how do we proceed to put humankind on the virtuous path of genuine development, socially responsible and in harmony with nature. It is submitted that UNCED 92 should give considerable attention to the formulation of transition strategies that could become the central piece of the Agenda 21.”
This is the word- Agenda 21: the UN strategy for redistributing the wealth accumulated by the “North” in order to create a completely “balanced” world society- under auspices of the United Nations of course and the private central banks controlling it. This can only come about by destroying the middle-class. A sudden redistribution and industrialization would not do- for the middle-class would undoubtedly rise in defiance against it. Therefore, Sachs argues for an incremental and carefully planned dissolution of the middle-class phase by phase:“To be meaningful, the strategies should cover the time-span of several decades. Thirty-five to forty years seems a good compromise between the need to give enough time to the postulated transformations and the uncertainties brought about by the lengthening of the time-span. The retooling of industries, even in periods of rapid growth, requires ten to twenty years. The restructuration and the expansion of the infrastructures requires several decades and this is a crucially important sector from the point of view of environment.”Then Sachs plunges into his most revealing statement:“However, the single most important reason to consider the transition strategies over a minimum of thirty-five to forty years stems from the non-linearity of these strategies; they should be devised as a succession of changing priorities over time. A good illustration is provided by the population transition. In order to stabilize the populations of the South by means other than wars or epidemics, mere campaigning for birth control and distributing of contraceptives has proved fairly inefficient.”Sachs argues that “an accelerated programme of social and economic development of the rural areas should be the outmost priority in the first phase of a realistic population stabilization scheme.”Who or what is to coordinate all this, according to Sachs, and how exactly is the UN to take control?“The solutions”, says Sachs, “can vary in terms of their boldness and take the form of global, multilateral or bilateral arrangements.” These arrangements should as far as Sachs is concerned ensure “at least partially the automacity of financial transfers by some form of fiscal mechanisms, be it a small income tax or an array of indirect taxes on goods and services whose production and consumption has significant environmental impacts.”Over time, so proposes Sachs, these taxes should increase:“Starting the operation with a one per ten thousand tax and increasing it so as to reach one per thousand in ten to twenty years seems a fairly realistic proposal, the more so that the scheme creates an interesting market for the private enterprises involved in R and D.”Reading all this, the question as to what entity should take charge is not difficult to answer. Sachs:“In order to generate maximum synergies between the national strategies and global action, the United Nations should create a forum for the periodical discussion and evaluation of these strategies and a research, monitoring and flexible planning facility to put them in a global perspective.(…). The forum should have a fair representation of all the main actors involved: governments, parliaments, citizen movements and the business world. Given its importance, it should be lifted from specialized agencies to a central place in the UN system.”This almost literally echoes the recent call by a group of scientists for the upcoming UN Earth Summit to create “a Sustainable Development Council within the UN system to integrate social, economic and environmental policy at the global level.”The underlying, more sinister element of Agenda 21 is of course the concerted effort on the part of the professors and unelected commiczars of this world, through multilateral treaties and regulations, to not only control the populations of the world but to cull them.Jurriaan Maessen is the writer and editor at http://explosivereports.com/
Greece should get more time, France says
Today @ 09:30 SEPT 24,12 By Valentina Pop
BRUSSELS - France is in favour of giving Greece more time to meet bailout conditions, provided it is "sincere" on implementing reforms, French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has said."We can already give it more time to pull through," he said in an interview with the Mediapart website on Sunday (23 September). He added that a Greek exit from the eurozone "cannot be the solution."But he also said Athens should be "sincere in implementing reforms, including fiscal ones."The Greek coalition government, led by centre-right leader Antonis Samaras, has still not managed to agree the €11.5 billion worth of spending cuts that were due at the end of June, with the junior coalition partners resisting further pension and wage cuts.
Ayrault said he had talked to the leader of the Social Democrats (Pasok), Evangelos Venizelos, about the country's attempts to overcome what is now a three-year long financial disaster."Those who have a lot of money in Greece invest in housing abroad. It's all immoral. The Greek crisis is structural, but also political," Ayrault noted.Two rounds of Greek elections in spring as well as political squabbles have helped to create a funding gap of at least €20 billion, on top of the promised €11.5 billion in spending cuts, Der Spiegel magazine has reported.The so-called troika of international lenders (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund) will only approve the disbursement of the next €31 billion tranche if the €20 billion gap is filled.On Friday, the troika suspended its mission and said it will come back to Athens in a week's time."During this period some mission experts will remain in Athens to assist the authorities with further technical work, while contacts will continue with the authorities from respective headquarters," the commission said in a statement.It gave reassurances that the "brief pause" did not signal any trouble and that discussions since early September had been "productive."The delay could be politically motivated to allow the US presidential elections on 6 November to take place without bad news from Greece that could send shockwaves through international markets.
Greece is not alone
Meanwhile, speculation about Greece's eurozone future continues.Swiss banking giant UBS has estimated a "likelihood of over 50 percent" that Greece will leave the eurozone next year. And it does not rule out that other euro countries may follow.Portugal last week ran into trouble over a contested austerity measure linked to its €78 billion bailout when 1 million people took to the streets and the government coalition almost collapsed over the issue.The government has since indicated it may repeal the measure, but it will need to come up with something similar in order for the troika to approve its next tranche of bailout money.Spain is reportedly negotiating a second bailout after having already secured €100 billion in June for its banking sector. Financial Times Deutschland on Monday wrote of an "XXL package" to be agreed in November including a second bailout for Spain, more time for Greece and a fresh bailout for Cyprus.
Separately, Der Spiegel quoted unnamed officials saying there are plans to increase the eurozone's €500bn bailout fund (ESM) to €2 trillion.The way to do it, according to the German magazine, would be to repeat the failed experiment with the temporary bailout fund (EFSF) of finding investors in China and elsewhere who would put money into a "special purpose vehicle."The plan is supposed to work this time because the ESM - due to come into force on 8 October - will be a permanent fund and have a larger firepower than its predecessor.
