The potential dangers of the European Stability Mechanism

I just discovered a website where Ellen Brown, author of the book "Web of Debt" (which I have just purchased!), posted a piece called "How the Goldman Vampire Squid Just Captured Europe". She kindly gives my blog a plug (which explains the several hundred hits that I have had in the last few days - thanks Ellen!), but even more importantly, she highlights the unbelievable truth behind the creation of the European Stability Mechanism.  She points to a remarkable Youtube video called "The shocking truth of the pending EU collapse!" that makes very sobering viewing. It makes it look as though the much vaunted European Stability Mechanism could be the latest stage of the financial sector's takeover of democratic government.

Here's what Ellen has to say.

The ESM is a permanent rescue facility slated to replace the temporary European Financial Stability Facility and European Financial Stabilization Mechanism as soon as member states representing 90 percent of the capital commitments have ratified it, something that is expected to happen in July 2012. A December 2011 YouTube video titled originally posted in German, gives such a revealing look at the ESM that it is worth quoting here at length. It states:

The EU is planning a new treaty called the European Stability Mechanism, or ESM: a treaty of debt.... The authorized capital stock shall be 700 billion euros. Question: why 700 billion?... [Probable answer: it simply mimicked the $700 billion the US Congress bought into in 2008.]

[Article 9]: ",,, ESM Members hereby irrevocably and unconditionally undertake to pay on demand any capital call made on them ... within seven days of receipt of such demand." ... If the ESM needs money, we have seven days to pay.... But what does "irrevocably and unconditionally" mean? What if we have a new parliament, one that does not want to transfer money to the ESM?...

[Article 10]: "The Board of Governors may decide to change the authorized capital and amend Article 8 ... accordingly." Question: ... 700 billion is just the beginning? The ESM can stock up the fund as much as it wants to, any time it wants to? And we would then be required under Article 9 to irrevocably and unconditionally pay up?

[Article 27, lines 2-3]: "The ESM, its property, funding and assets ... shall enjoy immunity from every form of judicial process.... " Question: So the ESM program can sue us, but we can't challenge it in court?

[Article 27, line 4]: "The property, funding and assets of the ESM shall ... be immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation, or any other form of seizure, taking or foreclosure by executive, judicial, administrative or legislative action." Question: ... [T]his means that neither our governments, nor our legislatures, nor any of our democratic laws have any effect on the ESM organization? That's a pretty powerful treaty!

[Article 30]: "Governors, alternate Governors, Directors, alternate Directors, the Managing Director and staff members shall be immune from legal process with respect to acts performed by them ... and shall enjoy inviolability in respect of their official papers and documents." Question: So anyone involved in the ESM is off the hook? They can't be held accountable for anything? ... The treaty establishes a new intergovernmental organization to which we are required to transfer unlimited assets within seven days if it so requests, an organization that can sue us but is immune from all forms of prosecution and whose managers enjoy the same immunity. There are no independent reviewers and no existing laws apply? Governments cannot take action against it? Europe's national budgets in the hands of one single unelected intergovernmental organization? Is that the future of Europe? Is that the new EU - a Europe devoid of sovereign democracies?

I downloaded the latest version of the treaty and it looks as though some of the details may have been changed (and the numbering of the articles is no longer correct). But it appears that  most of the features (and the dangers) are still there.

By the way, I can thoroughly recommend Ellen Brown's five part talk on YouTube (posted in 2009) in which she gives a quick run-through of the main points in her Web of Debt book. Well worth spending about 45 minutes to watch them.