Here Europe—Feel Free to Spy on Us
An executive order by President Barack Obama in December created quite a stir.
Signed by the president on Dec. 16, 2009, the order is headlined, “executive order amending executive order 12425 designating interpol as a public international organization entitled toenjoy certain privileges, exemptions, and immunities.” It reads, “By the authority vested in me as president by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including Section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (interpol), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words ‘except those provided by Section 2-c, Section 3, Section 4, Section 5 and Section 6 of that act’ and the semicolon that immediately precedes them.”
This automatically brings Interpol under Section 2-c of the International Immunities Act, which reads, “Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable.”
Just what does this mean to the average citizen of the United States? To answer that question, we need a little history about Interpol.
The Rise of a German Intelligence Model
In 1923, Dr. Johannes Schober, president of the Vienna police, established the International Police Commission (ipc). Within four years, at a conference in Berlin, member countries of the ipc adopted a German idea to establish National Central Bureaus of investigation (ncbs) in addition to establishing centralized police records registries.
In 1938, the Nazis seized control of the ipc, relocating its headquarters to Berlin. They maintained control of European policing till the end of World War ii.
Based on the same German model of the ncbs, Interpol was established in Paris after the war. It became an autonomous body in 1956. In 1989, just before the Berlin Wall fell, it moved to new headquarters in Lyon, France.
Throughout the 1990s, Interpol upgraded its systems to adapt to the latest technological improvements in data search, maintenance and sharing between various sub-regional bureaus, launching its first website in 1997.
In 2001, a Command and Coordination Center was established coordinating the operations of Interpol’s 187 member countries. By 2004, it had planted a liaison office at the United Nations staffed by a special representative, and in 2008, a special representative was appointed to the EU in Brussels.
The real concern here is the degree to which Interpol is becoming associated with the global security initiatives of the European Union. The EU is itself a very German idea, closely associated with the old Nazi vision of centralized government in Europe.
An Interpol media release in 2008 stated, “The concept of strategic global partnerships is central to Interpol’s future mission as enshrined in its Global Security Initiative (gsi), with the organization having entered into a variety of partnerships with the European Union, United Nations and the private sector” (Nov. 4, 2008).
So just what is this EU Global Security Initiative? According to Interpol’s website, it is “the strategic vision that will guide Interpol’s development and its support for global policing.”
That may seem a worthy goal. However, when matched with another even greater initiative of the EU—the EU’s Program for Global Monitoring for the Environment and Security (gmes)—the closer cooperation between Interpol and the EU raises significant red flags. It is the same strategic vision that the German national socialists held back in the 1930s! The fact is, it illuminates the direction that EU elites are taking in their imperial quest for global rule.
Surveilling the Whole Globe!
gmes is a powerful semi-space project being developed by the EU for the total strategic surveillance of the whole globe. Its potential to override and excel any equivalent initiatives developed by opposing powers in the race for global hegemony, in the wake of America’s decline, is staggering.
Integrating observation of the planet by both satellites and ground-based technology, the gmes project is being sold under the deceit of its being mainly for use in environmental control. As described by the European Parliament’s Directorate General for Internal Policies, all conceivable applications of the project “can be classified under the topics of atmospherics, marine, land, security and emergency.” Though an EU-conceived, -developed and -funded initiative with EU strategic goals in mind, the scope of its applications is “not restricted to the European area”; rather they are “worldwide.”
Of real concern as to the surveillance power of gmes and its potential strategic use by imperialist EU elites is the Directorate’s declaration that “gmescan be the appropriate strategic tool to support Europe on geopolitical issues through unified earth observation. gmes has strategic importance due to the EU’s role as a global actor … and makes an important contribution to the EU’s civil security [police] needs” (emphasis mine throughout).
Though couched in terms that would appeal to global warmists, carbon traders and old-fashioned greenies, the essence of this document is in the recurring military and “civil security” themes that thread their way through its verbiage. “Emergency response” (read rapid reaction force), “land monitoring,” “marine services,” “external border surveillance,” “crisis prevention”—all phrases used in the Directorate’s description of the gmes project—can all too readily connote not just police usage, but also military usage, especially in terms of the EU’s emerging role in global defense and security.
Already well advanced, though given little publicity, the gmes project will rapidly deploy a series of space satellites over the next five years. The Metop satellite was deployed in 2007. Next will come the Pleaides satellite in 2010-11, the Jason 3 and the system of three satellites termed the Radarsat Constellation in 2012-15, and the five-satellite system “Sonic” over the same period. The whole program is conceived, developed, funded and controlled by the EU. The major contributor is Germany, which so far has committed €1.15 billion to the deal. And there’s more.
The gmes program is designed to dovetail with the EU’s Galileo project, which will eventually send 30 satellites into circular orbit at an altitude of 23,000 kilometers above Earth. A global, space-based location-identification system, Galileo is planned to be superior to both the U.S.-based gps and Russian Glonass systems.
The newly ratified Lisbon Treaty/EU constitution grants control of the entire global surveillance system jointly to the European Parliament and European Commission. Prime end users will be EU global police and peacekeeping missions.
Giving the EU License to Spy
The above may well signal danger to those who fear the “big brother is watching you” potential of such a powerful system of global surveillance and intelligence gathering. But perhaps of deepest concern is the European Parliament Directorate’s indication that “Civil and defense applications increasingly draw from the same technological base, and there is an increasing overlap of functions and capabilities required for military and non-military [police] security purposes which often allows for the use of the same technology for the development of both security and defense applications. … The decision whether global positioning or Earth observation systems … are to be used for security or defense purposes is primarily political in character, not technological.”
That language simply puts EU elites in charge! And sadly—as many an intelligent observer both within and outside of Germany has noted—too many of those elites are tainted with the same imperial vision of their old Nazi mentors.
The point is that, since the EU-based Interpol is to become a prime end user of this surveillance technology, what the White House has now permitted through this latest executive order is the completely unchecked usage of gmes and Galileo by the EU via Interpol to extract intelligence of strategic value to the imperialist European Union, destined to be used to counter American power!
Next to the U.S. signing up a year ago to the regulation of its economy by the EU-controlled Financial Stability Board, this has to be one of the most significant foreign-policy blunders of America’s current administration. It literally permits the EU to spy on the U.S. unfettered by any control from its government.
Newt Gingrich has accused the Obama administration of “very quietly” signing an executive order that removes “all American constraints” from Interpol.
“Freedom of information acts don’t apply,” he said. “All the constraints that you as a citizen could use against an American police force, based on a recent Obama-signed executive order, give Interpol—which has relationships with Syria, Libya, with Iran—it gives them all sorts of extra legality in the United States in a way that has never, ever before been offered to Interpol” (Politico.com, January 5).
When one truly understands what is at play here, shades of Europe’s medieval Inquisition, with a high-tech, space-age touch, loom large—especially considering what happened when Interpol’s predecessor was taken over by the Nazis!
Sound extreme? Only to those ignorant of the real power behind this European empire. As our editor in chief wrote last month, this is none other than the seventh and the final resurrection of an ancient police state, the “Holy” Roman Empire!
You need to read our February edition to fully grasp what is afoot and just what is at stake. We are witnessing the appearance, yet one final time, of this old and brutish empire that has shed more blood throughout its long and cruel history than any other politico-religious entity on Earth!
Yet, to those truly attuned to this final resurrection of this old church-state combine, its arrival on the world scene is a great harbinger of hope! For it is perhaps the greatest of signs at the moment that the long-awaited and -expected coming of the Messiah, the only true peacemaker, is just about here!
