You may remember the college. I mentioned it a couple of weeks back in my post about the de-Britished top eurocrat, Jonathan Faull.The college is where they take in wanna-be eurocrats and put them through a kind of ideological kidney dialysis. They pump all their national blood out, cleanse it of national sentiments, and pump it back in filled with pure EU nationalism ('Europe is my country'). But as Tony Barber pointed out this morning in the Financial Times, though the EU has a big beaming smile on its face as Clegg rides high in the polls, 'it is doing its best to hide it, for fear that British voters spot it and punish Clegg accordingly.' Still, they just can't hide the glee. Today Hugo Brady, one of the senior researchers at the Centre for European Reform, a wildly pro-EU thinktank, put out a fantasy history 'published in 2070' of what a 2010 coalition government of Cameron-Clegg meant for Europe: 'Clegg himself took on the post of foreign secretary, setting the scene for the coalition's first crisis: Britain's European policy. Despite howls of protest from the Conservative grass roots, Cameron agreed to "put on hold" Tory demands for a membership renegotiation that would have withdrawn Britain from EU policies on social policy, human rights and justice and policing.' '...Cameron no longer had to fret about how he might extract himself from his pre-election promises on the EU when they proved undeliverable...The Conservatives, meanwhile, could afford occasional gestures to stubbornly high eurosceptic sentiment at home.' Brady goes on with fantasies of closer British-French ties on defence and common rules across the EU on corporate taxation, then a new treaty to establish a centrally-managed eurozone treasure fund equal to 3 percent of EU GDP -- and on it goes, though the list of all the powers of which eurocrats dream. Until the election, though, the eurocrats will stay quiet, like a crocodile dozing on a river bank: not really sleeping, but waiting for the moment to strike. Of course, the European Commission does not insist these lobbyists even register. There's a register, but it's not compulsory. So we have no idea of which of Clegg's former colleagues is pushing for favours for which industry. We do know however that when Clegg was a partner with euro-lobbyist GPlus, the company was representing the interests of the shadowy Russian energy giant Gazprom. So, one of the names absent from Clegg's CV is Putin. But also Colonel Gaddafi. See Richard's piece for details. What interests me, though, is that, of all the Clegg people who have also been lobbyists, his chief of staff Danny Alexander is the former director of communications with the European Movement. This outfit works against government by sovereign national parliaments, and for EU centralised government. It is the oldest of the European lobbying outfits. And its roots lie in millions of post-war dollars pumped in by the American secret service. The US intelligence operations established something called the American Committee on United Europe (ACUE). Christopher Booker and Richard North give details in their book, 'The Great Deception.' The ACUE was used to provide secret CIA money to promote 'the State Department's obsession with a united Europe.' The money went to a range of people and organisations working towards European integration, but the 'major beneficiary' was the European Movement -- the same outfit for which Clegg's chief of staff later worked. A researcher at Georgetown University in Washington -- the top university for producing foreign service high-flyers -- discovered ten years ago that the total pumped into the European Movement between 1949 and 1960 was $4m. Those were very big bucks in the 1950s. The CIA millions amounted to half to two-thirds of the Movement's income. Looks like Clegg's chief of staff was working for an outfit with a flawed pedigree. Now, you might think that would be frustrating for the Athens government. Yet the Greek finance minister has given no sign that it is. Odd, that: here for sure is a country that is in big need of low interest billions -- the bail-out will allow Greece to borrow at 5 percent instead of the 7.54 percent the ten-year yield has just hit. But the government hasn't yet asked for the money, and no payment will be made until it does, and they seem in no hurry to hustle the eurozone and IMF officials to Athens. Which seems more than odd: the Greeks are out in the markets refinancing at an historically-high cost, when cheaper loot -- in theory -- is available just for the asking. So what's going on? Gabriel Stein at Lombard Street Research has been asking just that question. In a note today he asks, 'Why hasn't the Greek government triggered the package?' He reckons there are a number of possible answers, ranging from benign to malign. Mr Stein does not attempt to assign 'greater or lesser likelihood to any of them.' My money is on this one: 'Even when activated, the package needs to be approved by national parliaments in at least some of the other EA [euroarea] countries, notably Germany and the Netherlands. This will no doubt be accompanied with posturing highlighting Greece's problem. There is also a risk that there will be delays or even that the bail-out would be rejected. In that case Greece would be worse off than before.' Then there is this possibility which may, as Mr Stein suggests, be in the 'realm of weird conspiracy theories.' Still, I've spent enough time with European Commission types to feel it has the tang of possibility: 'The Greek government has unofficially been told that although the package was announced, it is not, in fact, real. No money will be disbursed. Activating the package will make this clear, making Greece's borrowing prospects worse than when everyone believed there was a package.' Which is a bit like the point above. Or then again maybe the Greek government just doesn't want to humiliate itself by asking for a hand-out. I'd go with 'all of the above.'
The smile on the face of the crocodile
Share this article:
Connect the euro-dots: Clegg, Alexander...CIA?
Share this article:
19 April 2010 6:11 PM
A weird conspiracy in Athens...?
Friday, 23 April 2010
Oh, yes, it's all smiles here in Brussels over Nick Clegg's surge in the opinion polls. Of course it is: Clegg is one of them -- a former eurocrat, a former MEP, and a graduate of the College of Europe in Bruges.
My colleague Richard Waghorne has a strong piece in the Mail today, giving details of how Nick Clegg has tried to airbrush his history as a lobbyist from his official CV. Clegg has had ties to several of the secretive Brussels influence-peddlers, those EU lobbying firms that schmooze their way through the eurocrats, suggesting -- and apparently even drafting -- euro-laws that give Brussels more power to benefit their corporate clients.
Officials from the eurozone and IMF were due in Athens this morning for 'technical talks' on their promised €45bn bail-out for the Greek government. The volcano problem has made them move the start of the talks back to Wednesday.
Posts
