The New American – by William F. Jasper
Europol, the burgeoning police and intelligence agency of the European Union, has many people in Europe concerned about its continuously expanding mission and powers (see here and here). Now the agency appears to be getting ready to extend its reach into the United States in new ways, as part of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) being promoted by President Obama and a powerful coalition (see here and here ) of Wall Street one-worlders and globalist corporate executives.
On April 16, the Delegation of the European Union to the United States and Europol welcomed more than 140 members of the U.S. and European law enforcement communities for an in-depth discussion of transatlantic cooperation on law enforcement in Washington, D.C. According to the EU delegation’s press release on the event, the conference topics covered would include “cyber crime, terrorism, and crimes related to intellectual property rights.”
“As globalization intensifies, we have to recognize that crime has also become increasingly multinational, multifaceted, innovative and disruptive, and not in a good way,” EU Ambassador to the United States Joao Vale de Almeida said during his introduction. “The onus is on us, the EU and the U.S., public and law enforcement officials, to ensure that as we prepare to deepen our economic ties [through a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership], we adapt effectively to this transformation. We also need to consider how to align our law enforcement resources to ensure that as we open up the opportunity for businesses and working families, we also keep criminal interests in check.”
Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Jane Holl Lute reinforced the EU-U.S. convergence theme. She said, “Working together, we have already begun to see how we can transform the way in which we protect our nations, and our citizens, against the shared threats that we face. Whether those threats are from terrorists, cyber criminals, or those who seek to steal intellectual property … the cooperation between our law enforcement agencies, governments, and our nations have never been stronger, and its impact has never been greater.” (A video recording of the conference can be viewed on You Tube here.)
The sparse reportage of this important development in EU-U.S. relations left unmentioned the fact that Europol, like so many of the EU’s institutions, has incrementally taken on increased powers, with the European Commission always citing some crisis or exigency allegedly requiring more centralized police authority.
The EU’s steady erosion of the independence and sovereignty of its member states is not occurring by chance. As The New American has previously reported in many articles (see articles listed below), the architects of the Common Market (as the EU was known in one of its earliest incarnations) insisted from the start that the “project” would never evolve into a central government or in any way compromise the sovereignty of the nations involved. All the while, the same designers — as their correspondence and private speeches and communications show — were working assiduously to create a supranational federal government that would completely override the nation states of Europe. With the conclusion of the Lisbon Treaty, the people of the European Union were tricked, bribed, browbeaten, and cajoled into jettisoning almost every remaining vestige of sovereignty.
EU Ambassador to the U.S. Joao Vale de Almeida (quoted above) has been a key functionary in this subversion of sovereignty, including assisting in negotiating the deceptive and subversive Lisbon Treaty. As we reported earlier this week, many of the most influential people in the U.S. government and foreign policy and economic establishments are completely in tune with this subversive process. Our article, “CFR Applauds European Union’s ‘Real Subversion of Sovereignty’ ” links to a video of a recent panel discussion at which top members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) explicitly acknowledge and applaud the fact that “there’s real subversion of sovereignty by the EU that works.”
It is not surprising then to see the CFR well represented at this recent Europol conference. Among those attending the conference for the United States — and speaking at it — were:
• Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (CFR)
• Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Jane Holl Lute (CFR)
• Director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, Washington Institute for Near East Policy Matthew Levitt (CFR)
“Eroding Sovereignty Piece by Piece”
In 1974, CFR member Richard N. Gardner penned a signal article in the CFR journal Foreign Affairs entitled “The Hard Road to World Order.” Since hopes for “instant world government” under the United Nations had proven illusory, he wrote, the best hope for building “the house of world order” lay in a longrange “end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece.” This could best be done, he noted, on an ad hoc basis with treaties and international “arrangements” — on environment, trade, security, etc. — that could later be brought within “the central institutions of the U.N. system.” Gardner, now a professor emeritus of law at Columbia University, served in ambassadorial and diplomatic posts for Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton.
The Council on Foreign Relations has been pursuing that end-run strategy around national sovereignty — through both Republican and Democrat administrations — for many decades now. In a 2006 op-ed entitled “State sovereignty must be altered in globalized era,” CFR President Richard Haass argued that “in the age of globalization, states should give up some sovereignty to world bodies.” The CFR chief claimed that “sovereignty is not only becoming weaker in reality, but that it needs to become weaker.” Haass and his fellow one-worlders in the CFR globalist cabal are now pushing to destroy U.S. sovereignty in the same way that the EU has all but completely destroyed the national sovereignty of its member states. The primary vehicle currently being promoted by the CFR and the Obama administration to entangle the United States in the EU project is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). President Obama is calling on Congress to give him “fast track” Trade Promotion Authority that would enable him to push the TTIP through Congress with little or no debate and no amendments.