Banned! Buried! Forbidden! Europe's Bill of Rights

EU Commission's Censorship from Jean Monnet to von der Leyen

David Heilbron Price Jul 13 2022

Banned!

Seventy years have past since Jean Monnet chaired the first meeting of the European Commission in Luxembourg. It was then called the High Authority. It is the central innovation of the European Community of Coal and Steel. It brought peace to Europe for the first time in more than two millennia.

How? It provided the democratic and just means to adjudicate between coal and steel cartels, the national and multinational entities (greater than States) that incited Europe to seemingly endless wars. The High Authority was acclaimed as Europe’s Honest Broker.

Was it honest under Jean Monnet? No, not really. Today’s troubles stem from Monnet’s mistakes.

The first major act of the High Authority was to assemble a bureaucracy and make available the Treaty of Paris to the officials. This was the international agreement that defined their work, their relations with other institutions and their goals.

The officials were all given a bound copy of the Treaty with a black cover.

But Horror of horrors! It lacked one essential document in the Treaty.

Guess what Monnet left out?

Clue: Monnet was concerned about the autonomy of the Community and wanted to run the High Authority unhindered. To make his position clear, he wrote to the Council of Europe Secretary General just days after taking office.

On 1 August 1952, he wrote to Schuman’s former colleague, Jacques-Camille Paris, then Secretary General of the Council of Europe. Acting under Foreign Minister Schuman, he had negotiated the creation of the Council of Europe as a Director for Europe at the French Foreign Ministry.

Monnet wrote (on notepaper of the Planning Agency, not the High Authority!):

‘The role and nature of the Council of Europe are, as you are aware, wholly different from the European Community.’

This was one of the first shots in what became the battle between the two Schuman institutions. It set the two organisations on different paths when they should have been working together.

Robert Schuman had made this clear when in August 1950, just after he had launched the Schuman Plan for the European Community, he presented to the Council of Europe the outline of the Community institutions and how they would work together to reinforce Human Rights in Europe.

The first three Community treaties (Coal and Steel, Euratom, EEC) were all discussed in the Council of Europe. Monnet’s ill-judged action gave later politicians the unfounded belief that they could create treaties totally independently of human rights considerations.

They could override rejections in national parliaments. They could ignore referendums that rejected their drafts. They could install these fraudulent treaties lacking public support as if they were authentically democratic.

The least the public should expect is that Community treaties have full public support. It should be democratic. That is not the case for the like of the Lisbon/ Constitutional Treaties. They are imposed on the public against obvious pubic rejection. Brexit was the consequence of this Democratic Deficit.

Charlie McCreevy was European Commissioner 2004 to 2010.

How did this happen? Was the first treaty defining the institutions defective or was Jean Monnet as president of the High Authority responsible for the problem?

The missing Treaty

The Treaty of Paris contains eight documents besides the text describing how the institutions of the Community work together in the European Coal and Steel Treaty.

The Treaty of Paris is composed of:

1.       Text of the European Coal and Steel Community treaty, ECSCT ,

2.       The Charter of the Community or Déclaration commune,

3-5.       Three protocols on

• privileges of officials,

• the Court of Justice, and

• the Council of Europe,

6-7.       French and German governmental letters on the Saar,

8 .      Convention dealing with initial and transitory measures.

Guess which Monnet (who was used to getting his own way) omitted from his little black book!

Was it the Protocol on the Council of Europe?

This would have been an impossible task. There were three protocols of equal weight legally. One gave the legal immunities of the officials as far as diplomatic privileges were concerned. A second defined the Court in the European Community system and how it should work. This shows the importance of protocols: the Court is defined by one of them. Thus to leave out the third protocol would be seen as contrary to justice and common legality. What Monnet did was to reduce its importance.

The Protocol’s aim was stated as to ‘establish ties as close as possible’ with the Council of Europe. ‘It was emasculated by the doggedness and obstinacy of Jean Monnet,’ said Paul Levy, the Director of Press and Information at the Council. But the essential survived, but often only in theory.

The Protocol described its relationship the Community as being one of a human rights guardian. It included, at first, shared membership of the two parliamentary Assemblies. Before they were elected, national parliaments delegated the Assembly members, Article 1. Thus if both had common personalities it was easy for them to raise human rights and transparency questions that might arise in the European Community in the Council of Europe. Action could be taken in the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

The Protocol specified:

• The High Authority and the Community Assembly should send their annual reports on their activities to the respective bodies in the Council of Europe, Articles 2 and 3.

• The High Authority should inform the Council of Europe about the outcomes of recommendations it had given to the Community, (Article 4).

• Joint work together was envisaged in Article 6.

Monnet could and did minimise these stipulations in practice.

What could not be avoided was the document equivalent to a Bill of Rights, written legally in the form of a diplomatic treaty. He tried to eliminate it by leaving it out completely.

The Community’s Bill of Rights

The Charter of the Community providing the public and all participants of the institutions to appeal to Courts of law about corruption, lack of transparency and fairness. Two courts were available for this: the European Court of the Community and the Court of Human Rights at the Council of Europe (for a further, higher appeal).

This was the document left out completely of the printed copies.

Why was the Charter so important for the public and too much for Monnet’s tastes? It provided a guarantee that the institutions like the European Parliament should be open like a national democratic parliament, and the Consultative Committees should elected and open and yes! the Council of Ministers should also be open too.

In other words, politicians and representatives to the institutions should be held responsible to their electors, a record should be kept of their proceedings and the public could choose whether they would ‘kick out the rascals’ who behaved in a dishonest and autocratic fashion. That does not happen in autocracies of the extreme Right and Left.

The European institutions would therefore distinguish themselves from the People’s Democracies of Soviet controlled eastern Europe. Or as we would say nowadays from North Korea where the government ruled by edicts of a one-party State.

What the Charter says

The Charter makes clear that the Community is only open to democratic States who accept the Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It describes how unity can be expanded in Europe through the Community system, not by creating a federal Super-State but by creating further Communities as the needs arise. They do not attack the basic sovereignty of the States but in fact add to their sovereign powers.

It restricts entry into the European Community to countries that are able to prove they have and retain fundamental freedoms like: freedom of speech — to criticise government — and freedom of assembly — to create their own parties and opposition movements able to criticise centralised one party States. They have freedom to own property, to create businesses etc.

Importantly they recognise the new constitutional form that is inherent in the Community system. It is neither an international organisation like a confederation such as NATO or the OECD, nor a federation like the USA or Canada. The Member States retain their own sovereignty. But the remarkable innovation is that these sovereign States agree by free assent to designate one institution, in this case the High Authority or European Commission, to have supranational or federal powers. As Schuman wrote the Community system lies midway between a centrally controlled federal system (or Super-State) and a confederal system where the State is unrestricted.

The Charter states:

In signing the treaty founding the European Community for Coal and Steel Community, a community of 160 million Europeans, the contracting parties give proof of their determination to call into life the first supranational institution, and consequently create the true foundation for an organized Europe.

The Community system has the means to bind the States in a way to organise key sectors (like coal and steel) or the nuclear industry in the case of Euratom, so that the common goal of eliminating intra-State war is achieved.

Thus a new hope for a peaceful future is created that encourages peace-enhancing collaboration and commerce across the entirety of the Community territory. Common laws and a means to justice in case of disputes cement the process.

Even before the work was set in motion, the virtues of the idea that inspired it had already aroused  in our countries and beyond its borders an extraordinary surge of hope and confidence.

Membership open to all as far as Russia

Schuman was asked about Russia when he made his Proposal on 9 May 1950 that all European countries (defined by membership of the Council of Europe) could become members of the European Community.

Could Russia become a member?

Schuman’s answer surprised many. ‘Yes of course!’

If Russia signed up to the above freedoms of expression and assembly then it would be welcome. That, incidentally would have made the monopoly power of the Communist party impossible. But it put Russia’s choice in stark relief. Did Russia want peace or want the monopoly of Communist control and ideological imperialism?

The European Coal and Steel Community could easily have been expanded to include Russia’s coal, gas and petroleum to the advantage of all.

Buried!

The Treaty Charter found no liking with Jean Monnet. It presented quite a different world view from his idea of creating a USA-style market in what would be a federal State of Europe.

It is questionable whether Monnet ever really understood the significance of the constitutional innovation that Schuman had initiated. The Community idea was like nothing that had ever occurred in history. The Community had just one federal element. It was neither a federation nor a confederation. It had democratic controls far more potentially powerful than any other previous constitutional arrangement of freemen.

Schuman was a constitutional lawyer of great international renown. He was educated in Luxembourg, Germany and France. He earned his doctorate in law at Strasbourg university. He called this third approach ‘a supranational Community.’ ‘Supranational’ is a term directly associated with his new constitutional idea. To help people comprehend the magnitude of political power and astounding novelty of this idea in constitutional history Schuman wrote a book about it, analysed it in legal terms, gave innumerable speeches and wrote many articles.

What did Monnet write? Little or nothing is in his archives. He made out to journalists that he was behind the idea of Community. This is a gross exaggeration. The drafts were written by Paul Reuter, Schuman’s jurisconsult in conjunction with Schuman and his Cabinet director, Bernard Clappier, a top grade financial expert who later became head of the Bank of France. Monnet was self-taught and had never gone to university.

Admittedly these drafts were written and discussed in Monnet’s offices. Why? Because the Foreign Ministry was full of Gaullists and nationalists, violently opposed to any concession to Germany or any other foreigner.

It is clear Monnet was never at the origin of the idea of a supranational Community. In his Memoires, he writes:

The High Authority was qualified as ‘supranational’ in the fourth draft {of the Schuman Declaration}. But I did not fancy the term and never fancied it. … Reuter made his contribution in this creative phase.’ p352.

Monnet later struck out the term supranational in a later draft. Reuter was a trusted legal aid for Schuman, a man of his confidence, who helped Schuman prevent officials at the ministry sabotaging his plans for European reconciliation.

Monnet later often told colleagues that he was wrong to agree to an authority above governments — thus he failed to understand what brought thousands of years of war! So Monnet learned little from Schuman.

Monnet had worked with Charles de Gaulle during the war. He owed his postwar position in government as the chief bureaucrat of the Planning Agency to de Gaulle. And de Gaulle was firmly against anything that opposed his idea of a nation-State of Napoleon or Charlemagne.

This may be another main factor why Monnet acted as he did and buried the Charter Treaty.

Forbidden!

Three Communities were created that set Europe on a new path for peace and prosperity. The last two, the Euratom treaty and the Economic Community were hurriedly signed in Rome in 1957.

The reason for haste was that Charles de Gaulle was about to seize power. Europeans knew that these treaties would not be signed by France once he was in control.

A decade of Gaullist power followed. De Gaulle tried to destroy the Communities and block any progress towards unity. He wanted to dominate a ‘Europe of the fatherlands’ by force of his power. His ministers boycotted the institutions for six months hoping it would break them. The Community turned out to be stronger than an autocrat in one Member State.

The Charter was not only buried deep in the archives of the French Foreign Ministry but the ideas of democratic and human rights control was sidelined and forbidden as de Gaulle fired up a war in Algeria to gain power and then attempted to douse the flames top establish his autocracy.

When de Gaulle was forced to retire following riots and insurrection, European politicians were left with a Community system without its vital Bill of Rights.

Some of these politicians were ministers under de Gaulle. They had lived through a decade of autocratic decision-making, closed door meetings without the public having a look-in on their own rights.

Politicians too often prefer to make decisions without public supervision. It makes their work easier and allows a moderate amount of corruption.

Then this became a major problem. Gaullist France used the Community as a private piggy bank. The Community’s Common Agricultural Policy got out of hand with more than 70 percent of the Community spent on subsidising farmers and paying for farm surpluses in storage.

Democrats forbid public supervision?

In April last year I wrote to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen asking that the Charter be published on the EU website and in the Official Journal as a founding document of the Community. Not having received a reply, I made a complaint to the European Ombudsman.

I still do not have an official reply from the President’s office, a year and a quarter later.

I also asked Commission, Parliament and Council representatives who launched the Conference on the Future of Europe to publish the document to aid discussion on democracy in Europe. They readily agreed.

The Conference on the Future of Europe is now past history. The Charter has still not been published in spite of reminders of the pledge to publish.

• Has the legal service of the Commission put the Charter under a censoring interdict so it cannot be published on its website?

• Is it too afraid of the legal implications of the Charter Treaty? If not why do Europeans not have their Bill of Rights published with other founding documents in the Official Journal?

• Does this censorship prove that the Commission is now a confirmed autocracy?

• Once the Charter is well known and published by historians and newspapers again, and seen on television and the internet, will the autocracy collapse of its monstrous hypocrisy?

Russia and WW3: How did Europe's leaders get policy so wrong?

World War Three! 

The EU's economy is burst like a flat tyre. Today's policy repeats the errors of the 1970s when OPEC's Oil Weapon punctured Europe's economy. A decade of Stagflation followed -- a combination of high inflation and stagnant growth. 

Then, foreigners used oil price blackmail to change foreign policy. They quadrupled oil prices in 1973. They quadrupled them again in 1979.

Today EU's Russia policy is self-inflicted. It is suicidal. World War looms. 

Are leaders abandoning 76 years of peace in Europe -- the longest in all its history?

How did European leaders burn Europe's most precious asset like a candle under a blow-torch?

Let's go back to where and when Europeans gained that peace. 

In 1950, while the Russian Red Army was poised to conquer worn out, post-war western Europe, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman made a proposal, the like of which no nation in history had ever seen before. 

Remember the context. 

The French Communist party was the largest in the French National Assembly. Post-war inflation topped 60 percent. Schuman first reformed the currency base. When in 1947-8, Schuman had been elected Prime Minister, the US ambassador cabled that a Communist coup d'Etat was imminent. Insurrectional strikes paralyzed the country, riots caused chaos, trains were derailed. 

Josef Stalin ruled the Soviet Union and his Red Army controlled the Baltics, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and other countries. Millions were enslaved in Gulag camps. Other millions were executed at his personal behest. But in western propaganda however, he was the benign, pipe-smoking 'Uncle Joe'.

July 1949: French Foreign Minister Schuman points at Soviet Foreign Minister Andrey Vishinsky,
watched by US Secretary of State Dean Acheson (left) and UK Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin.

Schuman's analysis was far different from many commentators. He proposed a New Europe by making war 'not only unthinkable but materially impossible.' 

On 9 May 1950 the French Government accepted his proposal. At 4.30, in a notably strong, firm voice, he pronounced his plan to the press.

'Conditions in Europe are going to be entirely changed.'

'France has acted primarily for peace, and to give peace a real chance.'

'All Europeans, whether from the East or the West, will benefit from this.'

'Europe will be born of this.'

'France has acted and the consequences of its action can be immense.'

They were. They turned the world right-side up. Europe entered its longest period of peace and the greatest prosperity in all its history.

Schuman's proposal envisaged a supranational economic Community, firstly of coal and steel. It had innovative, new institutions: 

• an independent High Authority, 
• an elected Assembly, 
• elected consultation of associations of workers, consumers and enterprises,
• a Council of national ministers and 
• a Court of Justice. 

It would create a New Europe based on the hitherto unknown principle of a supranational Community of Coal and Steel.

 All Europeans were invited to join, Schuman declared. 

Russia, of course!

What about Russia, one journalist asked. Can Russia join?

Schuman's answer was shocking to those then. It is shocking to many today locked in boxed thinking.

Russia? But of course! (Mais oui!). 

Russia under Stalin! 

Schuman's grasp of reality and duty was light-years away from many of the leaders today. 

To understand Schuman's design for what he called the European House, we have only to look at his earlier achievements. He helped reform inflated currencies on an international scale. He was instrumental in 1948-9 in creating NATO. It offers mutual defence against any who threaten and invade one of the partner States holding common values. 

What were those values?

Schuman's government had proposed a European Assembly and a common market in July 1948. The Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms listed those values. Membership of the Council of Europe was restricted to States who agreed. Freedom presages the end of tyranny.

Marx's Mistake

Karl Marx had analysed what he called the contradictions and crisis of capitalism. Schuman had analysed the contradictions of atheistic communism. 

How, in God's good earth, would Russia, then Soviet Russia, live in peace and prosperity with the rest of the Continent? For Schuman the answer was the same as would admit post-Nazi Germany and Austria with their horrendous history into a Community of peace. 

He came up with precise predictions. The Soviet Union would collapse before the turn of the century, he told young politicians at the Assembly, although he would not live to see it. Europeans must be ready for that event. They must welcome those freed from its bonds. Politicians failed.

Isolation by former victims leads to repetition of violence. Each nation has innate qualities of culture, resources and geography. Nations should not become intoxicated with their assets to use them as instruments of domination. A Germany that played power politics between East and West was a danger. Post-Nazi Germany, Schuman said, should be welcomed  on the basis of equality by its former victims. 

The same policy that goes for Germany, goes for Russia. Isolating Russia drives her to work against Europe and into the hands of Communist China. It drives Europe into energy and food penury.

What should be Europe's answer for Russia?

Schuman wrote about a 'durable, organic link' to help nations blossom in freedom 'by mutually beneficial efforts and using their common resources.' That Community method is the best way to serve one's own country.

But any misuse of resources for war must be stopped at its first manifestation. 

'We must remove all reasons for war, and suppress it up to and including any temptation to start one. Nobody, not even the most unscrupulous government, should have an interest in it any more. I will go further: we want to remove any means to start a war, and to remove all temptation to war, and to risk one for gain. The worst of racketeers will be unable to spring a war on fellow Europeans.'

The Council of Europe Convention provided that instrument. The three European Communities with their common management of coal and steel (classical materials of war), atomic energy (nuclear war) and the common market (trade war) provided peace-enhancing infrastructure, aided by international anti-cartel powers.

Hope for Europe's failed leadership

After the collapse of the USSR, western leaders were not prepared to welcome post-Communist Russia at the moment of its great need.  Russia asked. Russia jointed the Council of Europe in 1996. But on 15 March 2022 Russia voluntarily withdrew. 

Western leaders thought they knew better than Schuman. They were less altruistic. Since Maastricht, they created a complex, dense and undemocratic 'European Union' for themselves. 

The Community future beckons. A European Energy and Security Treaty creating a new Community would bring Russia, the Ukraine and the West together. 

Instead of World War III, the participating States would have guaranteed peace and prosperity. 

But are our leaders too proud and obstinate to see it and work for it?

Do they prefer the suicide of civilisation?

Are Russians all evil and Ukrainians all Angels?

Ukraine Russia Crisis part 2

Russia is an international bandit, Ukrainians are all angels!

Caution.

Do not get swept up in media hype. For some reasons the EU, probably following the US lead, designates Ukraine as the poor, little victim of evil Russia. Neither State is a paragon of virtue. Ukraine runs private armies as does Russia with the Wagner Military Company.

For eight years those Russian-speakers in the Donbass who refused to conform to the decree that only the Ukrainian language was legal have been punished. For years on end, the civilians and schools are subject to massive destruction of bullets, mortars and 150mm howitzers. From 2014 to May 2021 some 14,000 people have been killed, most of them among the Russian-speakers. 

Belgium has three language groups: Flemish, French and German. Should the Brussels government bombard the communes when and if it changed to a two language State? 

Russians say the USA declared war on Serbia, Libya, Iraq and Syria where US citizens were not threatened on a daily basis as Russian-speakers are in the Donbass. Why were western media silent for those 8 years? 

Are western leaders going to explain the full context now? The reverse! EU Commission president von der Leyen wants to ban all Russian media. On what basis? How does that help EU citizens?

The fact is that neither Ukraine nor Russia are Member States of the European Union. Why then should its leaders be advocating probably the worst possible policy for Europeans? Besides provoking a wider war by taking sides, Europeans may end up with doubling or tripling of energy bills. A flat economy or its destruction may result.

Who gave the EU bureaucrats a mandate to destroy the livelihood of millions of its citizens?  

If the EU proposed a real peace policy, the area from Spain to Siberia could experience unprecedented prosperity and cooperation that it had ever seen. Such a policy could tie Russia to a new form of supranational democracy instead of casting its lot in with China and autocratic Communist codes.

Instead the EU is proposing arms shipments to the troubled area! How does that help citizens of the EU still recovering from Covid mandates?

Who will get the arms?

Most corrupt State in Europe according to Council of Europe, and Transparency International.

Ukraine most corrupt country in Europe after Russia

FEBRUARY 2018

Ukraine most corrupt country in Europe after Russia.

Ukraine ranked 130th among 180 countries in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2017 released by Transparency International. Ukraine improved its last year’s result by one point and got 30 points out of 100 possible. Next to Ukraine stand Gambia, Iran, Myanmar and Sierra Leone. Ukraine was able to achieve a slight improvement due to the fact that in 2017 the Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities (Special Anti-corruption Prosecutor's Office and National Anti-corruption Bureau) forwarded to courts first corruption-related cases where the suspects were high-ranking officials.

The Biden family and other US elites have intimate connections with Billionaire Oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky 

On Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken banned Kolomoisky and his immediate family from America, citing Kolomoisky’s “significant corruption.” ...

Kolomoisky, who built his fortune during the lawless years immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union, reportedly has a controlling interest in Burisma, the Ukrainian oil and gas company which put President Biden’s son, Hunter, on its board of directors in 2014 at a salary of $50,000 per month. Kolomoisky dispatched his private army to take over companies and destroy a Russian-owned oil and gas refinery in Dnipropetrovsk in 2014, according to reports.

NY Post, March 6, 2021.

Putin is an opportunist and sees post-Afghan USA as historically weak, spineless and corrupt. 

Billions of dollars of aid have gone missing in Ukraine from US taxpayers and from UN agencies. Is the war useful for US elites as smoke and fog? Is it a case of the tail wagging the dog? Special Counsel John Durham has already filed the first criminal depositions of a devastating investigation of widespread corruption of the US establishment. 

. 

 

 

Next:

Could the rise of Russian and Ukrainian nationalism and the present crisis threatening the very existence of the European Union have been foreseen in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union? 

 

RUSSIA: How Spies deceive other Spies and You!

The UK is about to change the main focus of its intelligence surveillance operations.
Russia.

Was Russia involved in the Brexit referendum? Did it influence the Scottish independence referendum?

How can governments know where the main threat is? Intelligence is about deception. The agencies are not only in the business of collecting information on others, foes and friends, but of deceiving enemies.

Sometimes they are so good at deception that they fool themselves. And the Public is at the end of the whole business. It gets deception information from all sides.

So should we be surprised if governments feel the main threat comes from a smaller State while ignoring a powerful foe with a population of 1.3 billion and an economy second only to America’s? And significantly Communist countries set a premium on propaganda to subvert and undermine those they consider their strongest enemies.

So shouldn’t we be a little leery of pat answers based on old prejudices?

Science not Prejudice

Who is in charge of the Intelligence agencies? It is the public in the shape of bureaucrats and politicians. If politicians cannot always be trusted, can the top spies they place in position to run the intelligence services always be trusted? Are they always honest? Politicians come and go. bureaucrats remain. If they are not honest, what can be done?

Thus Democracies often end up being run by deceived politicians trying to control the deceiving machines of the spy community.

Take the case of the recent report on Russia by the UK Parliament Intelligence and Security Committee. This has hit the headlines because Prime Minister Boris Johnson delayed the publication till after the election that brought him a large majority of seats in Parliament (although a minority of popular votes.)

The politicians enquiry was conducted in the years of Prime Minister May and draws on interviews of the time and published material dating even further back.

Much information has come out since then that throws the evidence into a critical light.

The Concluding Decision.

The report has led politicians to the conclusion that the intelligence services underestimated the role of Russia in the two referendums. They say that the services did not take the danger seriously. They did not investigate thoroughly or properly.

So what must be done? In the future Russia must be analysed with more care and more money.

Is this the correct conclusion? Let us turn to the key paragraphs that leads the parliamentary rapporteurs to come to this decision.

The main sources of Russian propaganda are:

• Broadcaster RT and Sputnik,
• Trolls and bots on the internet,
• Hack and Leak of important documents, as exampled in the US elections,
• Real life interference such as giving bank loans to the French National Front party.

If this is the evidence then it is pretty thin except for one point.

• In a footnote the Report admits that only 1300 people on average watch the Russian broadcaster, RT. Hardly enough to swing a referendum of 46 million voters.
• Trolls and bots might increase FaceBook traffic etc but what influence do these have?
• Did the Russians actually turn the US elections to their favour by getting the American public to vote for Donald Trump? His opponent, Hillary Clinton and her husband, seemed to have intimate relations with the Russian government.
• As for one Russian bank making a loan to a French nationalist party, it was refused loans from all Western banks. What was it to do? What loans do other parties get from foreign-owned banks or foreign millionaires such as the oil-States?

One could contrast this with China’s success in its Unrestricted Warfare policy:

• taking over British Steel Ltd (after massive Chinese steel dumping destroyed the viability of EU’s steel sector).
• taking over a major sector of the UK nuclear power industry as constructors.
• implementing of Chinese Huawei connectors into the UK communications networks. This has made the new 5G upgrade seem inevitable. But this could lay the whole network susceptible to infiltration. What better potential for spying?

Thus the Chinese have a grip on UK construction and defence materials, the energy sector and communications. How can a State build battleships and canons if the steel is controlled by foreigners? How can you compete if the lights go out? Who needs spies on the ground when you can tap into their communications?

Russian hack is ‘evidence-free’

This UK conclusion also contrast with a group of US intelligence veterans who say that when certain politicians claim a Russian hack changed the US election results, it is 'evidence-free'.

So what is the key triumph of the Russians that shows their guilt and proves they are the main foe of the West? Surely having swung the US elections in favour Donald Trump. But did they? What is the evidence?

The UK report says:

42. It was only when Russia completed a ‘hack and leak’ operation against the Democratic National Committee in the US – with the stolen emails being made public a month after the EU referendum – that it appears that the Government belatedly realised the level of threat which Russia could pose in this area, given that the risk thresholds in the Kremlin had clearly shifted, describing the US ‘hack and leak’ as a “game changer”, and admitting that “prior to what we saw in the States, [Russian interference] wasn’t generally understood as a big threat to [electoral] processes”.
43. It appears that the Intelligence Community did learn lessons from the US experience, and HMG recognised the Russian threat to the UK’s democratic processes and political discourse.

Let’s examine the ‘Game Changer‘ as it is the main ground for the report’s conclusion. The report admits here that this was an allegation in a far different league than bank loans, trolls or propaganda TV with no audiences.

FBI hierarchy fired under Trump

It was clear from the US election campaign and later events of 2017 involving the US intelligence service that corruption ran deep in the State system. Three and a half years on, we find that almost the entire intelligence superstructure has been fired.

Spying on the President

A notable exception was Admiral Rogers head of the NSA, the National Surveillance Agency. On 17 November 2016, he revealed to President-elect Trump that his staff’s communications were under illegal surveillance by both the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and the FBI (the Federal Bureau of Investigation). This is not only highly illegal but treasonous as it undermined the newly elected president.

So who is in the right, the top FBI agents or the president? The FBI mandate is to investigate US-based criminal personalities. The CIA is the external agency for intelligence. But the CIA works with friendly intelligence agencies such as the British and Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand services in the Five Eyes collaboration. These other agencies can, if the CIA requests it, tap into US citizens in the USA. Hence the CIA has track on whomsoever it wishes.

Corruption and Big Money

Where does the corruption come in? Money and power. The US spends as much on Defence and intelligence as most of the rest of the world combined. A candidate who promises to clean up the Swamp is suspect and to be eliminated.

An early manifestation of the efforts of the intelligence community to oust President Trump was the ‘Dirty Dossier‘. This, according to FBI chief Comey, alleged that Trump had been caught with prostitutes and framed by the Russians when in Moscow.

This utterly untenable tale was soon proved false. Who had fabricated this fraudulent file? Who paid for it and spread it abroad?

It was a former British spy now open for hire as an independent adviser. His name: Christopher Steele. He was found to be paid by the lawyers who worked for the Democrat National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton.

Steele’s rewriting of unsubstantiated material in the dossier were so outrageous that even the supposed subsource of the information is suing him for deformation. Steele’s defence: The material should not have been divulged as it was secret.

What else do we know about Steele? He was known as virulently anti-Trump. And he is one of the contributors to the UK Parliament’s report on Russia! Mr Christopher Steele, director of Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, is listed as one of the five ‘external expert witnesses.’

In the US his Dirty Dossier was mischievously introduced as grounds, countersigned by FBI chiefs, to further surveille president Trump and his colleagues. Hundreds of documents have now been released showing how this fake document was used time after time in the FISA court to sustain a criminal and treasonous activity against the president. (FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that requires a court to agree to any surveillance.)

The intelligence chiefs knew the key dossier was fraudulent!

It was also used to initiate the Mueller enquiry. Over several years of investigation and multiple millions of dollars, it could not find any case for Trump being involved in illegal activity with the Russians. Some 2800 subpoenas were issued by Mueller, 500 witnesses called and 500 search warrants were executed.

The Democrats then turned to an attempted impeachment based on supposed mishandling of anti-corruption matters in Ukraine. That too failed. Why the Ukraine? A cover-up is the most obvious motive as Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden has now been declared to be a criminal suspect in what the Ukrainian president Zelensky declared may involve treason there.

So what about the key factor in the UK parliamentary report that is the real ‘game changer‘ for intelligence work to refocus on Russia? The allegation is that Russian hackers were able to penetrate the computers at the DNC and download files of Democrat leaders. These Russian hackers then allegedly passed them on to WikiLeaks who published them.

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange denied the information came from a State actor, that is, Russia. He hinted broadly that he received the data from a disillusioned Bernie Sanders supporter and DNC employee. He was later assassinated in unusual circumstances.

UK report’s main evidence

This ‘cyber hacking‘ is the key to how UK may spend its intelligence budget, so what have later investigations shown?

William Binney

One man should know. That is Wlliam Binney the former technical director at the NSA, the top surveillance agency in the world. He broke with NSA as a whistleblower, because it was taking and storing all data of Americans contrary to its statute. This is the spy-on-everyone, Stasi version of intelligence. Besides his career, his integrity cost him dear.

He examined the metadata of the supposed downloaded files. It was not hacked, he concluded. It was downloaded locally. The internet would not support the speed stamps that the data recorded. The files could not have been downloaded and transmitted over the internet, and certainly not across the Atlantic. The speed of the download was so fast it could only have been accomplished by attaching a drive into the DNC computer itself. It was an inside job.

This view was confirmed by a group of former Intelligence community experts who wrote a memo to President Donald Trump, emphasizing that the data was taken locally.

They wrote:

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Was the “Russian Hack” an Inside Job?

Executive Summary

Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computer. After examining metadata from the “Guccifer 2.0” July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device.

Something smelt foul. The intelligence community in charge refused to make any scientific evidence to back up their political assertions. They said that no evidence had been adduced that Russians were involved. Any attempt to analyse the evidence was resisted!

Why the FBI neglected to perform any independent forensics on the original “Guccifer 2.0” material remains a mystery – as does the lack of any sign that the “hand-picked analysts” from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who wrote the “Intelligence Community Assessment” dated January 6, 2017, gave any attention to forensics.

They concluded:

From the information available, we conclude that the same inside-DNC, copy/leak process was used at two different times, by two different entities, for two distinctly different purposes:

-(1) an inside leak to WikiLeaks before Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, that he had DNC documents and planned to publish them (which he did on July 22) – the presumed objective being to expose strong DNC bias toward the Clinton candidacy; and

-(2) a separate leak on July 5, 2016, to pre-emptively taint anything WikiLeaks might later publish by “showing” it came from a “Russian hack.”

The second leak by ‘Guccifer 2.0’ was alleged to be a Russian or he may have been dressed up to be one using the CIA tool box. CIA Director Brennon was sacked by President Trump and his security clearance removed.

Thus it is highly unlikely that any Russians were involved at all. The FBI management refused to make a direct investigation of the DNC computers. They were never confiscated and examined by forensically. Instead, they contented themselves to have a contracted company, Crowdstrike, who worked for the DNC issue a report that was never finalised.

Secretary of State Pompeo has discussed this conclusion with Binney, as far back as 24 October 2017 when Pompeo was the new CIA Director. Is the UK parliamentary committee on Intelligence not familiar with this? Is the EU?

Given the importance of the issue it is appalling that the key ‘game changer’ issue has not been properly investigated in open Court.

The European Commission seems also to hold to the, as yet uncertain and probably untenable, idea that Russians cyber-hacked the DNC computer across the Atlantic internet. On June 2019 the Security Union Commissioner Julian King still repeated the Russian hack story as if it were a fact.

Are the UK, the EU and millions in the USA and across the world being fooled by what is easily testable Fake News?