Brexit means Brexit? Not if the Eunatoed States of America has anything to do with it.
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Published on the The Slog on August 21, 2016
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HM Sloop Brexit should be sailing the high seas in search of new trading links beyond the European Union and its dysfunctional currency, economic and fiscal policies. But if Theresa MayorMaynot (and the people she represents) get their way, the less than seaworthy sloop of salvation will stay in port, making only occasional day trips to Ostend. Eight macro events may yet foil the plan to sabotage Brexit, but none of them are going to emanate from the Mayflower crew.
When it comes to Brexit, things seem to be moving along very nicely. If you voted Remain, that is. In just 48 hours, it will be exactly two months since The Historic Shock Vote. This is the current state of play:
- The woman who acts as Commander in Chief is a Remaindeer. The man with his hands on the purse strings is a Remaindeer. The woman in charge of the security services is a Remaindeer who’s only been in the House for five years. She’s supposed to be working out a points system for immigrants in the light of Brexit. The Commander in chief keeps her in a pocket, under a thumb.
- The Brexiteers have been given the job of squabbling with each other. Thus far, Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and David Davies are making a fine job of it. To ‘help’ him in his task of securing Brexit, Davies has been given a smaller office with fewer staff than anyone else in the Cabinet.
- Although it is of course far too early to tell, all the business, trade and employment data since Brexit has been positive; the EU – in stark contrast – faces major political, fiscal and trade crises in Spain, Italy and France respectively. In the light of this, the Pound is falling (what else?) just as all those holidaymakers go away and discover how expensive it is in the US and Europe.
- Every business medium around the world – with the honorable exception of the Wall Street Journal – continues to treat Brexit as a global economic disaster of inestimable proportions, despite the fact that a first year secondary school kid could do the maths to show that Japan, China and Italy are infinitely more dangerous and immediate problems.
- Theresa Queen of the Mayflower and her crew have pissed away 57 days during which the official Brexit process has moved forward not one millimetre. Both old and new media are full of trolls declaring Article 50 to be irrelevant, but that is not credible for one simple reason: there is no way a group of control freaks like the EC would have put it in the Lisbon Treaty if there was no point to it. More damning is the complete absence of any logical or halfway convincing reason why the application hasn’t been made. Brexit, after all, means Brexit. Well, so they keep saying anyway.
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Either way, every time Cap’n Theresa signals to her fleet that Article 50 will probably be triggered around, oooh, March 2019, there’s a leak from the Brexiteers….and then the bumboys at the Telegraph are briefed to reassure the 52% (for we are the 52%) that actually no, it will be done before March 31st 2017. This, as you will know by now, is a date of no importance whatsoever – but nevertheless has an uncanny habit of turning up over and over again.
What’s going on?
Let’s rewind the tape to a Slogpost of January 11th this year, in which I wrote this:
I very rarely write statements as definitive as that, because too often they quickly become hostages to fortune. But it was based on sources in Brussels, Westminster and Washington and the information was solid: you will not be allowed to leave.
There was, I suspect, nothing wrong with the information – which two out of three sources described as ‘common knowledge’. Indeed, the Washington source insists that the emails of a certain H. Clinton do (or did) make reference to the facts as laid out before me.
The facts were right, but my interpretation was wrong. I was, to be frank, a bit thick about what they were driving at: I assumed electoral rigging.
Perhaps that was indeed considered, but then rejected as unecessary – I don’t know. Certainly, the result came as a bombshell in Whitehall, where absolutely zero work had been done on what to do if Cameron lost the Referendum.
However, Our Man in Brussels (not that senior, as I’ve said before) remains unshakeable. And in the last 72 hours, he has reaffirmed what he first told me at the turn of the year: “It will not be allowed to happen”.
Among the upper ranks of UKIP and Tory Leavers, there remains a fatalistic clarity about what will (or rather, won’t) happen now.
Pro-Brexit Tory leadership candidate Leadsom has been suitably scared off, and the Conservative grassroots denied their chance to vote for her. The Blair/Campbell PR axis is pulling out all the stops to get at best lukewarm Remain doubter Jeremy Corbyn ousted as Labour Leader, and corporate stooge Owen Smith installed as his replacement.
Meanwhile, the mini-sloop Brexit sits in dock with its anchor firmly attached to the bottom. And apart from the odd cruise trip designed to give the illusion of action, that is exactly where it will stay.
Unless, that is, one or more of the following events occur:
- Donald Trump becomes President of the US
- Marine Le Pen becomes President of France
- Deutsche Bank finally crashes
- The Italian banking system collapses
- A Japanese meltdown triggers a rates panic
- The Fed gives rates another hike in September
- The Dutch vote to leave the EU
- Brazil defaults on its debts.
As the Buddhists say, all things must pass, everything is connected, nothing lasts forever. I would venture to suggest that the Pieces of Eight above will sooner or later do for globalist neoliberalism and financialised capitalism. At which point, the EU will be swept away, and Brexit – along with Article 50 – will cease to be issues of any importance.
Stay tuned.
They Live!
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Published on The Doomstead Diner on July 10, 2016
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Prior to reading the screed below, I suggest watching the two videos above to get a better understanding of the whos, hows & whens of the founding of the European Union.
Old Nazis never die, they just go into economics.
The outcome of the Brexit Vote and its aftermath over the following week caused me to do something I don't do that often, which is to actually do some RESEARCH, rather than just shooting from the hip on what I think is going on just based on seat of the pants observations of history over the course of my lifetime. That lifetime is so far decently long by Homo Sap standards historically speaking, I'm moving up on 60 years walking the earth now. However, that only takes me back to 1957, and those first few years I was of course pretty oblivious to Global Politics, with these issues only beginning to hit my consciousness with the assassination of JFK when I was 6 years old.
I got a decent enough intro to politics and history from the POV of approved Western Academia and Pundits during my undergraduate years at Columbia University in their required 2 semester course in Contemporary Civilizations. Here you were required to read all the great works of people like Hume, Locke, Descartes, Machiavelli, Nietze, Aquinas, St. Augustine etc, etc, etc. I confess to NOT reading all their seminal books cover to cover during this period, and often relied on the Cliff Notes to prep up for the exams. lol. I was a SCIENCE major afterall, not a History major! In terms of budgeting my time for studying, it seemed more important back then to concentrate on biochemistry, mathematics and physics, the important topics for what I thought would be my future career. Also getting laid was a very important priority cutting into my study time. lol.
I did however gain at least a passing knowledge of the Western/European version of history as it was being passed out in Ivy League Universities back in the 1970s, which generally seemed to promote Democracy as the great end result of all this philosophical nonsense, although Machiavelli seemed to argue against that idea, and so did Nietze. Even so though, at the time I just didn't see a real close connection with current events of the day to ideas and shit that was published 200 or 300 or even 1000 years earlier, and stood the "test of time" as Great Works you needed to be familiar with in a good Liberal Arts Education.
Notably ABSENT from this seemingly endless parade of Great Works (and you had to read at least one of them a week AND write some kind of comprehensible paper based on the book) was anything that covered fairly RECENT history, like from around 1900-1970 at that time. The only things I knew about WWI and WWII came from Hollywood Movies, glorifying the exploits of CMH winning HEROES like Sargeant Alvin York in WWI (portrayed by Gary Cooper in Sgt. York) and Audie Murphy in WWII (portrayed by Audie Murphy himself in "To Hell & Back"). So it waited many years here before I began to get some clue as to what REALLY went on during this period.
Have you ever seen a more blatant piece of War Propaganda? Do you really think Audie Murphy was the Arnold Schwartzenneger/Bruce Willis/Sylvester Stallone Superrman Hollywood made hime out to be?
While I was floating along in blissful ignorance of this period for 40 years from 1970 to 2010 or so, there have been Historians going back into the records to look at who did what and when, and what sort of political outcomes and institutions we got out of that clusterfuck.
Among the most interesting outcomes of this to me now because of the ongoing clusterfuck in Europe in the aftermath of the Brexit is the founding of the European Union. Where did that piece of shit come from, who is responsible for it and what are the principles upon which this "Union" rests?
As it turns out, the EU was born in Nazi Germany even before the end of WWII. The principles and the constitution were all written prior to the supposed "defeat" of Fascism in Europe, and the folks who wrote this material also retained power long after the defeat of the Nazis on the military battlefield, well into the 1950s for this generation of Nazis. Mainly German & Belgian politicians. (see the above videos at the top of the article for the full list of scumbags)
The EU Constitution as it exists today is completely anti-democratic, and this can be observed by the fact they repeatedly ignore Referendums of the people themselves and consistently undermine both national sovereignty as well as some "Human Rights" Amerikans typically take for granted like Habeus Corpus, the right to Trial by Jury, and the legal principle of Innocent Until Proven Guilty.
First off, we KNOW that Prescott Bush, Father and Grandfather respectively to 2 of our post WWII POTUSes laundered money for the Nazi Party. By itself, their combined 16 year rule covers a nice chunk of the post-WWII period. We also KNOW that the Clintons are servants of the Bilderberg Group, they've been card carrying members of that bunch of Fascists since their days in Arkansas.
Really though, you don't need to know ANY of this History if you just observe the OUTCOMES over time here. Knowing the history does verify many aspects, but the progress has been right out there for everyone to witness over these years.
First of all, let us look at the end of WWII. The Big Demon himself Adolf Hitler committed Suicide with Ava Braun in the Berlin Bunker, and so like Osama Bin Ladin, the Big Demon was Dead. However, the Industrialists who funded Hitler needed to get rebuilt here, and with the exception of the IG Farben conglomerate being dissected up, all the industrialists in charge of the subsidiary companies remained in their positions, and with the exception of a few egregious scapegoats like Adolf Eichmann at the Nuremberg trials, the Elite in Germany post WWII was exactly the same as the Elite that signed up with Hitler and the 3rd Reich.
Here in the FSoA, we imported many of the Nazi Scientists like Werner Von Braun to help us develop more and better missiles with which to deliver the wonderful new War Toy of the Atomic Bomb. Werner is the same guy who developed the V-2 Rockets which rained down the Death From Above over London of course, but he was never held responsible for that.
In the words of Tom Lehrer…
Vonce da Rockets go UP
Who cares vere dey come DOWN
That's not my department
Says Werner Von Braun
So as you can see here, although we ostensibly defeated Nazi Germany in WWII, Nazism and Fascism never really died, it simply went under cover through politics & economics. The EU as an Economic Union was created by Industrialists, for Industrialists, and it was built up over decades of time, one increment at a time with the Final Goal the very same Pan-European Goobermint led by Germans that the Nazis had tried and failed to put together militarily, mostly because they foolishly took on the Ruskies at the same time they were trying to conquer Europe.
Fast forward to today, and what is truly remarkable here is that traditionally left wing websites and pundits SUPPORT the European Union, which is exactly the type of Fascist organization that they were battling AGAINST in the Spanish Civil War and then against Mussolini and Hitler in WWII following that. In fact the whole Brit Labor party is fracturing precisely because as a party they were pro-Bremain, but their chief Jeremy Corbyn was insufficiently enthusiastic about this choice.
Now, the argument made in favor of the European Union is that it brought Peace & Prosperity to Europe for 70 years since the end of WWII, which is probably the longest period of Peace that continent has had since the Dawn of Agriculture. How did they accomplish this mighty feat? By exporting War & Poverty to the 3rd World, that's how!
The European Union is the Political arm of Fascism in Europe, just as NATO is the Military arm of Fascism. Although the main Power Base for Fascism moved to Washington in the post-WWII years, NATO and the EU were created as a means for German Nazi Industrialists and Banksters to secure their hold over the continent, supported by FSoA Nazis like the Bush family. In both locations in the post-WWII years, both Europe and the FSoA experienced an unprecedented level of prosperity, but this was accomplished by the progressive rape of resources from South America, Africa and the Middle East. About the only folks who did not get their resources raped at least at the beginning were the Ruskies and the Chinese.
To keep from being raped, the Ruskies went step for step in military buildup with NATO, the EU and the FSoA in the "Cold War", but sadly for them their credit card limit wasn't as high, eventually bankrupting them. Francis Fukuyama took this opportunity to declare this the "End of History", with the FSoA and its Allies the big winners here after thousands of years of warfare.
The Chinese took another tactic, instead of letting the West rape them or attempting to go toe to toe militarily, they raped themselves! In cooperation with the international industrialists, they turned China into the world's foremost industrial sewer, bred up a generation of one child policy slaves and worked up a huge stash of UST worthless toilet paper in return for this self-sacrifice.
In the course of this post war history, one political system got completely wiped off the map in political discourse, FASCISM. There were no more Fascist Goobermints ANYWHERE! Fascism was DEFEATED! All that was left for a while were Evil COMMUNISTS! After the Soviet Union imploded and the Chinese turned into Slaves, there were no more Political Systems left to vanquish.
However, what was the victorious Political System? Well see, Fascism/Nazism earned a real bad Brand Name as a result of WWII, so what we have is not called Fascism, it has been Re-Branded. Now it comes under the Brand Names of Neo-Liberalism and Neo-Conservatism, which basically are one in the same thing. You also see all sorts of rebranding of "Capitalism", attempting to distinguish "good" Capitalism from "bad" Capitalism. "Free Market" Capitalism = Good, Crony Capitalism & Corporatism = Bad. With no good Communist states to bash now also, "Socialism" has become the newest Punching Bag, and the whole current failure here is being blamed not on the Fascism we have been living under since WWII, no it's Socialism that is responsible for this! lol.
Another big problem with Fascism is that people seem to have a real hard time with defining what Fascism actually is in practice. Most people tend to associate it with virulent racism and xenophobia, not as an economic system which enriches the few at the expense of the many. In truth, it is basically the mirror image of Communism, a reverse Robin Hood system of steal from the poor to give to the rich. This is precisely what has occured over the years since WWII ended.
For the first few years of this, inside the FSoA and Europe, this did not seem to be the case. Most people in these countries (with the notable exception of the underclasses like Blacks in Amerika) experienced a rising standard of living, and were sold also that everyone around the world was being "lifted out of poverty". On the latter, this just was one BIG LIE. Sure more people got electric lights and other gizmos, but huge gaps developed in the 3rd world between Haves and Have Nots. Huge Slums developed in places like Rio De Janeiro Brazil, Calcutta India and Lagos Nigeria. Enormous slums like these never existed before, people lived out in the countryside doing subsistence farming. By "modern" Western standards they were rural poor yes, but at least they could feed themselves and at least they weren't packed like rats into congested slums. This was NOT an improvement of standard of living for these folks, even though the GDP figures for Brazil or India or Nigeria appeared to be going up over the period.
So here in the FSoA and over in Europe, a generation of people including myself grew up in ignorant bliss, believing many falsehoods that were regurgitated over and over in our schools and across the media. We were taught to believe that our armies were protecting our Democracy, when what they were really doing is protecting Corporate profits. In the words of Gen. Smedley Butler..
.
How many of you ever even HEARD of Smedley Butler in any HS or College History class? I never did, and I went to really top level schools! I only found out about Smedley Butler during my last decade researching the roots of collapse. Smedley was likely the greatest HERO we have ever had in the FSoA, he actually stood tall against the Banksters when he got it all figured out.
Then of course there was the material written about both the Bilderbergers and the Tri-Lateral Commission in the 1960s & 1970s. Carroll Quigley published his seminal work "Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in our Time" in 1966, and laid out explicitly what was going on behind the scenes, but was this ever recommended reading in any of your History classes? It never got on any of my reading lists, although certainly there was endless material there to read from people who had been dead for over 200 years. You were kept so occupied reading all this old shit, none of the material really IMPORTANT to understanding what was going on ever got discussed.
So for 99.99% of the population both in the FSoA and Eurotrashland, we were all completely unaware of the Triumph of Fascism in WWII, and sold on the idea we lived in a "Democracy". What the Fascist Elite had learned was that as long as you put up the Window Dressing of Democracy but controlled the Marionettes running for office, you could get whatever you wanted enacted into law. It never mattered which political party was in "power", Tory or Labor, Republican or Democrat. As long as the money and bennies were flowing pretty freely through Western society, Joe Six Pack in the FSoA and Francoise Cheap Wine in France were happy to believe everything was getting better for everybody! More cool electronics coming out all the time. COLOR Televisions! Muscle Cars! Transistor Radios! Walkmans! Personal Computers! For a while there, it was a new toy every week coming out of Japan! And like everyone else, I just HAD to have one of these new toys every time they got issued out. To live was to buy & consume.
Meanwhile though, the War and Rape of the earth necessary to produce all those toys never stopped. We had Korea and then Vietnam, which incidentally started as a French Colonial War, the FSoA just took it over after the Frogs ran out of gas. Wars in the Middle East also non stop through the period, you had Israel-Egypt in the 60s right through to Desert Storm and now the War on Terror, which is undefined in location or country, but exists everywhere and is a danger to all good Westerners everywhere too, so be afraid, be VERY AFRAID.
Upping the FEAR level and upping the military engagements overseas through the Bush-Obama period kept the economy rolling in the west. The Huge Debts generated by the non-stop war translates to more money flowing through the economy, because in this economic system, DEBT=MONEY! It works too, until you reach an inflection point and the resources you can acquire through war are less than the cost of the war, and this has been the case for at least the last decade, although possibly longer than that.
The result of this is increasing economic difficulty, both in the nations that are being bombed and the nations doing the bombing. In fits and starts, the total economy is contracting, and that is making funding all the social welfare programs more difficult, and racking up enormous debts as countries working under the system attempt to maintain the standard of living they enjoyed while it all was going swimmingly well. One by one, they all fall off the cliff, and Failed States pop up all over the globe like Mushrooms in Kennet Square PA on a damp morning.
In the First World countries, this problem is now manifesting itself as Political Lockup. It is not just the Tories & Labor in the UK and the Repugnants-Democreeps in the FSoA that are split and can't gain a controlling majority, this is true in MANY of these Nation-States now. Oz has this problem, so does Spain, so does Austria, and I suspect just about any country that holds a "Democratic" election nowadays will experience the same phenomenon. There is a polarization in the populations, no party can present a workable solution to the problems faced and so "Democracy" fails this way. Because if no Democratically elected Goobermint can solve the problems, some other form of Goobermint crops up.
What we hear now from some intellectuals in the Elite is that the People have to be saved from themselves, if they can't make the "right" decisions, then it is up to the Elite to make the decision FOR them. Which of course, getting back to the European Union, is precisely what this organization is designed to do! A Goobermint of Nazis, by Nazis and for Nazis. According to James Traub, it is time for the Elites to RISE UP against the Ignorant Masses!
Did I say “ignorant”? Yes, I did. It is necessary to say that people are deluded and that the task of leadership is to un-delude them.
Sadly of course, Nazi-lites like Traub don't have a conventionally palatable solution to resource depletion and population overshoot either, but they could of course resurrect their old "Final Solution". Death Camps are not something Nazis advertise, even the old Nazis didn't call Auschwitz a "Death Camp", it was a "Work Camp". What about today's Nazis? Are they running Death Camps? Yes they are, and in Plain Sight too and on a much bigger scale!
Today, entire countries are being turned into Death Camps. Turkey is the largest one, but Greece is quickly catching up. They aren't called Death Camps of course, they are called "Refugee Welcome Centers". They don't have Gas Chambers & Ovens that we know of as of yet, but are those really necessary? The conditions in these Welcome Centers are atrocious. Malnutrition and Disease will do the killing job just as well as Zyclon-B did for IG Farben given just a bit of time to get rolling. Doctors Without Borders has already reported that the Death Rate in some of the African Refugee Camps is already horrendously high, as many as 5 children/day reported in Sudan in 2012 and likely higher now.
AUGUST 2, 2012—Sudanese refugees living in appalling conditions in camps in South Sudan are falling ill and dying at rates alarmingly above accepted international standards for emergencies, the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned today.
Epidemiological data gathered by MSF in refugee camps in South Sudan reveal an average of five children dying per day in Yida camp in Unity State, home to 55,000 refugees. One in three children was found to be malnourished in Batil camp in Upper Nile State, where MSF is treating 1,200 severely malnourished children. Flooded terrain and inadequate sanitation are the main contributors to the devastating health conditions, MSF said.
“The number of children dying in Yida camp is appalling, and the high number of children in our feeding program in Batil camp is just the tip of the iceberg,” said André Heller-Pérache, MSF head of mission. “The majority of patients in both camps are malnourished children, who are further weakened from diarrhea, malaria, or respiratory infections, and quickly enter a vicious circle of illness leading to further complications and death. Our medical teams are working round the clock in desperate conditions trying to save lives.”
How long before the Death Rate in the Turkish and Greek Refugee Camps reaches these levels? Or is it already there? We'll never know the truth of this until long after the fact, just as the general German population did not know the truth of Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen & Auschwitz until after WWII, and that was only because they lost the War. Had they been victorious in that war, this history never would have been written. The victors write the history of course.
So then why did the Closet Nazis who founded the European Union allow the History of the Holocaust to be written? Because in the aftermath of the War first off too many people who survived came out to tell the story, and second because Demonization was necessary to assuage public guilt, and Scapegoats were chosen as sacrifices to the cause. The Nuremberg Trials were held, a big 22 people were tried and 12 were sentenced to Death. Do you really think only 22 people were responsible for the death of MILLIONS of people? Only 12 of them deserved to die? There was a whole organization here with minimum 1000's directly involved in the operation with full knowledge of what was ongoing.
Despite the fact it could not be hidden in the aftermath of the War, whitewashing of the event has persisted over the years, to the point there are entire websites devoted to the idea it never happened at all!
I do think most people today accept that the Holocaust did in fact occur, but they also tend to believe such a thing could NEVER AGAIN happen. People in the Western world don't believe their leadership is as sick & corrupt as the Nazis of the 1930s-40s, nor do they believe their leadership is as sick & corrupt as the many Dictatorships and Puppet Goobermints we have supported over the years, including such notables as the Shah of Iran, Muammar el-Khadafi and the entire House of Saud. However, it takes one to know one, and all the evidence is there to show that the leadership of the FSoA and the EU is AT LEAST as sick & corrupt as all of those, if not more so by an order of magnitude. This level of corruption is becoming increasingly more exposed, and it is one of the things motivating the Brexit Vote, along with the current polarization in many other Western Goobermints.
For most people in the West, accepting that you live inside the Belly of the Nazi Beast is pretty hard if not impossible. So no matter how much evidence you present, how much history and scholarship on the topic you dig up, they just won't believe it. "WE" are always the GOOD GUYS! "THEY" are the BAD GUYS!
In this case in this iteration it's not the Kikes who are the Bad Guys, or the Nips or the Krauts. This time round, it is the Towel Heads who are being Demonized. Forget the pronouncements of The Donald here, just cruise the commentariat of numerous websites to get a feel for the zeitgeist going down here. Muslims are all portrayed by many people in the commentariats as sub-human ANIMALS! Often with the coda they are in need of EXTERMINATION and we should "Nuke 'em till they GLOW" and Glaze over the entire Middle East with the full arsenal of Nukes the FSoA totes around the world on Submarines and Aircraft Carriers as the Big Swinging Military Dick on the Planet. This is the "Final Solution" proposed by the modern Nazis if the Towel Heads don't die off fast enough in the Refugee Welcome Centers.
If you don't believe modern Nazis are ALIVE & WELL, just look at Ukraine. Just look at The Donald. Just look at the EU and its History and current actions. Just READ the fucking internet. They are here alright, in FORCE. THEY LIVE!
THE BOYS & GIRLS FROM BRAZIL ARE BACK!
Britain Goes Bonkers After Brexit: The End of the Beginning
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Published on The Doomstead Diner on June 26, 2016
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Brexit Discussion with Jason Heppenstall, Monsta & RE
The carnage across the markets and the political hornet's nest unleashed on Friday after the Brexit Vote came in with a LEAVE result has been truly amazing to behold, and this is only on Day 1.
We can be sure the Central Banks have been working furiously over the weekend to get a strategy for calming the markets on Monday, which undoubtedly will amount to huge injections of liquidity to keep any of the large systemic banks from locking up. However, there is so much PANIC right now through all sectors in all markets it's hard to imagine how they can plug all the leaks here.
HERE THEY COME TO SELL 'EM AGAIN!
For the crowd supporting Brexit, there is some initial Blowback which nobody predicted, which is that on the heels of this it Split the UK itself, with Scotland and Ireland in favor of Bremain, while Britain and Wales voted Brexit. So now Scotland and Ireland are talking about holding their own Referendums on leaving the UK so they can stay part of the EU. Scotland already held one of these referendums last year where the Leave camp lost, but with this latest change probably would sswing a new referendum the other way. Ireland is a really peculiar example here of how confused things are, because way back when they actually voted AGAINST joining the EU initially, but then the thunbscrews were put on them and in a revote were persuaded to join. “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again to get the voting result you want”.
Speaking from this POV, Paul Craig Roberts doesn't think the Leave Vote will stand up, with Brussels and the IMF, World Bank etc again putting the thumbscrews down to either force a new vote or to force Parliament to go against the vote of the people and Bremain anyhow. The Referendum is supposedly “non-binding”, and in order to be enacted into Law, Parliament has to send a Letter or at least make an Official Statement invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.
1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.
2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.
3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.
4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.
A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.
Even after such an “official” declaration by Da Goobermint, the negotiations to unwind this marriage have a timeline of 2 years. That is a LOT of time for still more SHTF in both the UK and in the EU as a whole.
Far as the Brit Pols and the Eurocrat Clowns & Jokers are concerned, you have 2 opposing camps on this part of the debate also. Current Prime Minister David Cameron is stepping down, but not for another 3 months. As a Bremain supporter, he doesn't think he is the Man for the Job of negotiating a Brexit, which is about the first true thing I have heard out of the mouth of a politician in a long time. Kudos to DC for that. However, DC was also the person who actually suggested a Referendum, confident at the time I suppose that Brexit was a laughable idea and would be soundly defeated.
Unfortunately in the interim, the Refugee Crisis escalated out of control and the EU Clowns & Jokers have proved ever increasingly ineffective, anti-democratic and just plain stupid. Any credibility they may have once had has long since been lost. Really NOBODY in the entire EU except the Political Class beholden to Brussels can STAND these people, or being under their thumb economically, and as a result politically as well. You don't bow to the will of Brussels, they make your life miserable. See the Greeks for this, who after a brief and fairly impotent attempt at getting some kind of reasonable deal on their small mountain of debt totally capitulated to their Masters in Brussels.
The Brits (and Welsh, Scots & Irish) are in a slightly better position than the Greeks were. First off, when they joined the EU they never gave up their own currency of Sterling. So they can still print their own money. Second, the UK is home to the City of London, one of the largest financial centers in the world, exceeded only perhaps by Wall Street. This bollixes up all their operations, and while maybe they can move to Frankfurt or Brussels itself over some period of time, that would be an extremely expensive and difficult move to make. Thus you get still further turmoil in the financial markets during this period.
In any event, the EU Clowns are pushing the Brits to Invoke Article 50 IMMEDIATELY, to get on with this divorce! "Let's get it OVAH with here already! We HATE each other and we don't want to sleep together anymore! The Marriage is OVAH!"
The Brits on the other hand are shuffling their feet here on this, as mentioned Cameron won't send this letter and is stepping down to let some other Pol do the dirty work. From the Brexit side, they are in no rush either to carry through with the Referendum Results, especially given the already nasty fallout from the first day! They want to now use this to try to negotiate a better deal with the Euroclowns, but like the Greeks before them they don't REALLY want to leave the EU.
Problem on this of course is that at least by EU standards, the Brits ALREADY had the best deal, they got to keep their currency but ALSO had access to the Eurozone trading market with low or no tariffs, etc. The Euroclowns don't want to negotiate a STILL BETTER deal with them, since of course directly after that everybody will be clamoring for the same deal.
Which now brings us to another perhaps even larger problem than Brexit (which certainly is a big enough problem on its own!), which is the fact that in just about all the countries in the Eurozone, there are simmering Populist Movements that want OUT, extant even before the Brexit Vote.
Podemos in Spain under Pablo Iglesias wants Out. 5 Star in Italy under Beppe Grillo wants Out. The National Front under Marine LePen in France wants Out. The Party for Freedom in the Netherlands under Geert Wilders wants Out. Just about every country on the Balkan Migration Route of the MENA Refugees does NOT want Brussels dictating to them precisely how many Refugees they should or should not give Asylum to. This includes places like Austria, Hungary, Croatia etc. So Brussels is under a LOT of political pressure here, and in the medium to long run simply will not hold together as a union. That does not mean though that in the near term they will not use all tools at their disposal to keep this Ponzi afloat, they most certainly will do that. Everything depends on this, the solvency of the banking system leading the way on this.
Next week certainly will have a lot of Market Turmoil as all the Big Players try to reposition themselves in the aftermath of the initial carnage. How well the Central Banks can contain this and prevent Financial Contagion from spreading throughout the entire system is an Open Question. Interest Rate tools are pretty much shot since they are at ZIRP or NIRP all through the bond market. Ouright monetization of debt would destroy whatever is left of credibility here, and beyond that there still is no mechanism to deliver freshly printed money to the consumers who spend that money. Without that, you have no flow of funds, velocity of money drops to zero and it does not matter how much you print.
To sum it up, this would be a good time to load up on preps.
RE
Danger! EU Demolition in Progress
Off the keyboard of Jason Heppenstall
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Published on the 22 Billion Energy Slaves on February 22, 2016
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It’s getting harder all the time to distract oneself from how threadbare the fabric of our societies is becoming. No matter how much you avert your eyes it is all but impossible not to notice things unravelling around you. This is happening on every level, from the local to the international, manifesting itself in a multitude of ways. Just as a fractal pattern has both the macrocosm in the microcosm, and the microcosm in the macrocosm, we are seeing signs of collapse small and large all around us.
Collapse Cafe 10/4/2015: UK Special Edition
When Does the Sun Set on Britain?
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Our discussion with Norman Pagett and Jason Heppenstall on issues focused on the UK as the collapse of industrial civilization progresses
Also, don't forget to take the Energy Survey! We are going to hold it open an extra week because links to the survey were broken when I launched the Survey. They have since been fixed.
Rant Regarding Refugee Relief
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Published on the Doomstead Diner on September 10, 2015
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The Refugee Crisis has been "Topic of the Week" in the Collapse Doom-o-sphere. Everybody's Talkin' about what to DO about this growing problem, with few plausible solutions being offered up anywhere, be it on the Blogs or from the Political class running the show here. From Zero Hedge to Donald Trump, from Jim Kunstler to Nazis in Hungary and the Czech Republic, EVERYBODY'S TALKIN'.
To add more grist to the mill, I ranted on this topic last night, detailing some of the complete STUPIDITY that is ongoing here as the crisis escalates. Sad to say, the discourse is unlikely to get any smarter as time goes by here.
We also have up a new Collapse Survey TM for readers to drop down their opinions on how to handle the Refugee Clusterfuck. Below, I'll also include a few of the current Text Responses to the Survey. Also another LINK to the Survey of course. Did I remind you enough times to TAKE THE FUCKING SURVEY? lol.
It's a Wicked Problem. How would you handle it?
Snippet:
…However, there is a rapidly escalating issue worth Ranting on, the Refugee issue. I wrote my first article on this issue a couple of weeks ago, and this week I published a new Collapse survey to find out what the Kollapsniks think we can or should do about this problem. Here you get all sorts of apocalyptic ideas which come up in the commentariat of the blogs, along the lines of shooting anyone who tries to cross a border. Even our own leading POTUS Candidate The Donald has come out in favor of Deporting everyone who doesn't have their papers in order.
However, while we have a long standing issue with illegal immigration along the border with Mexico, these days the main focus for the Western Industrialized Nations is on Europe, where refugees from all over MENA are trying to escape escalating warfare and ever depleting supplies of water and food at ever higher prices they can't afford to try and make it to the “promised land” of Germany, of all places. You do know I am sure that when the Jews got kicked out of Russia during the Pogroms in the 1800s, where they ended up migrating to were places like Germany and Poland, and you also are aware what happened to 6M of them in the 1930s. Uncle Adolf handed them all a First Class Ticket to the Great Beyond TM, that's what happened. Do you really think the Germans of today will behave any differently than the Germans of the 1930s when Depression hits in full force?…
For the rest, LISTEN TO THE RANT!
This story came out on Zero Hedge after I recorded the Rant, but before I published.
It escalates rapidly…
Following Hungarian cameramen kicking 10-year-old girl refugees, and Czech police hauling immigrants of trains and writing numbers on their arms, it appears the horrors of the past are quickly forgotten when it comes to 'solutions' for the present. As The Jerusalem Post reports, the leader of the Czech 'nationalist' National Democracy Party, has called for refugees to be placed in Terezin – a former Nazi concentration camp – "Why build tent camps for the aliens? We have the beautiful fortress town of Terezin where the aliens could concentrate before they are taken home by trains." Police are investigating whether his comments constitute a criminal act and Czech Jewish leaders have refused to comment on the incident.
As The Jerusalem Post reports, police in the Czech Republic are investigating comments made on Facebook by an extremist politician calling for refugees to be placed in Terezin, the former Nazi concentration camp.
Adam Bartos, the leader of the fringe yet vocal far-right nationalist National Democracy Party, published the comments about the site, located in the central European country, on Monday.
Reacting to the establishment of a refugee camp near the country’s border with Slovakia, Bartos wrote, “Why build tent camps for the aliens? We have the beautiful fortress town of Terezin where the aliens could concentrate before they are taken home by trains.”
The FULL TEXT of the Rant will be available HERE in a few days
A Selection of Early Responses to one of the survey text questions:
If you were in charge, what policies would you put in place now to try and stem the tide of refugees all over the world? (text response)
Educating women seems to be the best way to lower the birth rate. I'd try to educate and empower women in 3rd world countries. Too little too late, though. |
As King of the World. Migration is a fact. It will happen as climate change begins to bite. Develop soft population growth controls and alter national boundaries/resource consumption to accomodate as many people as possible while working to decreace total population to a sustainable number through natural reductions. (Like this ever has a chance in hell of happening). |
There effectively is no way to stop people from trying to get to places that seem better than where they come from. The only thing that can be done is resolve some of the military conflicts; its the only thing about which we have any control (climate change is probably no longer in out control for the short term, anyway). Unfortunately, the conflicts continue to multiply without any end in sight. The last round of interventionist policies of the early 2000s caused even more instability than the previous round of interventions in the mid 1990s. Is there anyone that seriously thinks more intervention is going to solve the conflicts. |
Did the Greeks DESERVE to get Greeked?
Off the keyboard of John Ward
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Published on The Slog on July 16, 2015
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GREECE: Applying a needle and thread to the idea that somehow “the Greeks deserved it”
“Rape ‘er? Are you kiddin’ mate? She was f**kin* gaggin’ for it”
I really don’t know how to define or rationalise this post other than calling the piece “getting it off my chest”.
I was directed to Richard North’s site this morning and read a lucid, well documented column from a powerful eurosceptic voice. But something throwaway towards the end got right up my nose and evoked the comment thread that follows.
Maybe at times I get too sensitive about Greece and what’s being done to it. God knows, I’m more aware than most of the infuriating nature of the place at times. But if you sympathise with this summary, I’d deem it a great favour if you’d pump some internet oxygen into it.
‘Oh dear. Just when I thought that, at last, an article about endemic Greek corruption was going to reach the right conclusion, it turns into a vague apologiae for Troika gangsterism.
I have been a regular visitor to Greece and enthusiastic Grecophile for 45 years. I have probably written more on the injustices inside (and done to) Greece than any other Western blogger. So allow me please to expand and correct here and there.
1. As you point out, Franco-German to Greece export & banking corruption is every bit as disgusting as that of the Greek élites. I don’t see anyone punishing Germany. Or France.
2. 80% of Greeks approve of tax evasion because history has taught them that their payments go into the same back pockets of bureaucrats and bent developers as everything else that the ordinary Greeks produce with such thrift and passion.
3. The entire medical sector is about 6-7% of the Greek population. Every doctor and dentist I’ve ever met takes bribes… even when the treatment is free on the State. None of these people have suffered a jot from austerity, and over 90% of them vote Nia Dimokritia. Pharmacies cheat the system because they too are an élite mafia. Ordinary Greeks don’t benefit from this corruption, they pay through the nose for it. It is the corrupt pols who refuse to regulate it.
4. Despite all this obvious evidence of WHERE the corruption problem lies, Troikas 1&2 chose to deal with precisely those people fostering it…who of course heaped the cost of austerity onto the people who are not the problem. But the EU is every bit as corrupt as they are: Herr Doktor Schäuble prefers to deal with those of like mind to himself.
5. When at last the vast majority of Greeks woke up and elected a government determined to root out and destroy the pre-1789 style privilege of the élites on their backs, the EU, EC, ECB, and Eurogroupe gargoyles worked overtime to turn down every proposal they made and destabilise that Syriza régime. This would seem quixotically deranged behaviour for a group of people allegedly in favour of “reform”. Here they were, presented with the most idealistic, honest and popular Greek political party for more than 40 years…but as the IMF correctly reports, EU fiscal blackmail in the final fortnight (all of it illegal under EU Law) took Greek debt unsustainability from the surreal to the impossible.
What exactly makes you think either Tsipras or the toiling classes he represented ‘deserved’ that level of depraved sociopathy?
6. Cornered at last, the IMF’s Christine Lagarde has blown a massive hole in this ridiculous wall of Brussels-am-Berlin sanctimony. The aim of these three bailouts is now clear for all to see: it never was nor indeed could ever be debt repayment. To use the French term, it was a summary and gratuitous execution pour encourager les autres. And at a level even more base than that, it was a full-frontal attack by federalist fanatics on the sovereignty of a nation…a nation I observe, year in year out, working much harder than any Nordeuropeans of my acquaintance.
SHORING UP THE SHANGHAI & GANGING UP ON GREECE
Off the keyboard of John Ward
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Published on The Slog on July 9, 2015
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Tell me: is there a decent hero on the planet?
Market control in a supposedly neoliberal world, fortunate glitches in a nervous Stock market, and bullying hypocrisy from the squandered marbles army. There is little or nothing worth saving in any of it.
The Shanghai index’s collapse was ‘stemmed’ during Asian trading earlier today. Much relief all round, but there are two reasons not to be joyful about it: first, the market is still around 55% higher than it was a year ago, when the property market collapse pulled novices into stocks…so logic would suggest it has further to fall; and second, it is not market sentiment that has stopped the rot, but more draconian Beijing regulation. 50% of all China stocks are now suspended, and yesterday the government ordered a blanket ban on anyone with more than 5% of a company’s stocks from selling for the next six months.
So this is not a rally, it’s a dam. In the US yesterday, a glitch came to the rescue of NYSE traders already nervous and gloomy. Nobody I spoke to believed the hiccup was either accidental or satisfactorily explained.
“There’s definitely an issue if we see a further correction in the Chinese stock market,” said Russ Koesterich, BlackRock’s chief investment strategist, but then he added a tell-tale bit right at the end about the EU (my italics): “Greece is going to be a negative in the short term. If you don’t see a deal on Sunday, you’re going to see a negative knee-jerk reaction on Monday. I don’t think a ‘Grexit’ is priced in,” he said. However, he did not see Greece as a major problem for the market longer term, “since Europe is backstopped by the European Central Bank.”
In recent days, more and more people with their brain functions intact are starting to gen up on the real Greek debt canvas that’s been gradually painted over since 2009 by ham-fisted cover-up artists called Draghi, Schäuble, Dijesslbleom, Schulz, Samaras et al. I’d refer those who missed it to the Daniel Hannan demolition job The Slog performed on June 17th this year in relation to his woeful ‘analysis’ of Greek debt and surplus, because Point 4 therein is an important reality that the daubing history-changers would prefer you didn’t perceive. This is that the ECB could this afternoon write off two-thirds of the entire Greek debt without any harm or cost to anyone anywhere at any future time.
A central bank configured like the ECB can put a zillion quadrillion Swiss francs of debt into its ‘negative assets’ column and forget about it, because the ECB cannot go bust. The surreal accounting system behind the euro ensures that the Central Bank can be blown up by a direct nuclear hit, but its viability as a financial institution will remain intact. The markets and the first Troika were perfectly well aware of this, as are the hypocrites working forTroika2.
The Greek debt is not being forgiven for a number of reasons – lending market dislike of written-off debt, fears about default contagion, a German determination to contain all resistance contagion, and a continuing belief that the euro’s cadaver is not dead, it is simply resting. That’s it: there is no fiscal or economic logic to any of it. Club Med is being destroyed by austerity to show the markets that European debt will be repaid come what may – even if the entire region has to starve and degenerate into Civil War in order to achieve that goal….a goal that is mathematically unachievable anyway. The situation really is that surreal, and its practitioners that profoundly deranged.
Degrading and depriving millions of EU citizens for the sake of a fiat currency with no Sovereignty to guarantee it, and no way to opt out of it – because it was designed by hubris-fuelled idiots keen to offset any and all responsibility for unsound fiscal governance.
That’s what we are looking at here: a policy that is blatantly unconstitutional under the Rome and Lisbon treaties, and one that demands the bill be paid by the waiters, not the troughing borrowers. In exactly the same wicked and lawless manner, the Berlin FinMin is now lobbying for any failed Greek banks to be the subject of bailins whereby entirely innocent citizens will lose such savings as they have left…precisely as Cypriot citizens and foreign retirees lost theirs. For Mr Dijesslbleom has his template, and that template must be used.
Meanwhile, the odiously irresponsible Troika1 lenders got away with their margins largely intact from the early stages of this ripoff – because they either sold on their investments to vultures, or the vultures themselves paid 10cents on the Dollar and received only a 40% haircut. Goldman Sachs (which conspired with the original right wing Greek government to deceive Brussels about the scale of the debt they were busy selling to the fat cats) in turn has never been brought to book for that heinous crime.
So to sum up, the German position as of last night was a flat refusal to accept any devaluation of a debt that can never be repaid, but which could be largely vapourised by one push of an electronic button. Some call this intransigence; I call it insanity…the insanity of fanatics who refuse to accept defeat. The same mentality, if you will, as those SS officers who – with the Russians two streets away from the Reichschancellery in 1945 – walked around calmly shooting any citizen unwilling to resist the Soviet advance.
Francois Hollande – the Socialist President of France – and his FinMin Muscovici have now fallen in with the eurogroupe Schützstaffel tendency… fully aware of the fact that France played a central lobbying role in designing and then exploiting the irresponsible nature of the euro’s format: since EMU came into being, the French have failed to hit a single deficit target they were set by the Commission. No bat-pummelling for the French, though: bullies, after all, never take on anyone approaching their own size.
There remain for me this morning three other targets for ire. First, Tsipras – for offering to continue with a 3-year bailout. That’s not so much a red line as a red rag to all those tired and tortured bulls who voted for Syriza in January. Second, the European Parliament, whose behaviour towards Tsipras was horribly reminiscent of Mussolini’s fascists shouting down Haile Selassie’s speech to the League in 1936. And finally, a disgraceful British Labour Party too ideologically constipated and europhile to align itself with the People.
‘Forward with the People’ a famous Labour paper used to say. What a truly reticent, flappy-bottomed shower of pampered fluffies they are.
History in Free Verse
From the keyboard of James Howard Kunstler
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History might not rhyme, exactly, but it’s not bad for free verse. Greece is this century’s Serbia — a tiny, picturesque backwater nation blundering haplessly into the center stage of geopolitics. And the European Union is, whaddaya know, Germany in drag, on financial steroids.
Nobody knows what will happen next in the struggle to wring some kind of debt repayment promises out of poor Greece. Without “restructuring” — a virtual national bankruptcy proceeding — there can be no plausible promises of repayment. Both sides seem to have exhausted their abilities to juke their way out. The European Union and its wing-men at the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) can only pretend to kick that fabled can down the road because it has turned into a cement-filled 50-gallon drum. The Greek government can only pretend to further dismantle its civil service and pension systems lest angry citizens toss it out and replace it with a new government, perhaps an ugly and pugnacious one made up of Golden Dawn party Nazis.
In the background, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, and perhaps even France wait without peeping to see if Greece is allowed to restructure, because you can be sure they will demand the same privilege to debt relief. But that’s hardly possible because the ECB has been engineering a shift of debt-holding away from the big corporate banks — which made all the stupid loans — to the taxpayers of their member states, especially Germany, which stands to be the biggest bag-holder when a contagion of serial default seeps across the continent.
This implies, of course, that along the way to that outcome something sickening happens to the price of all the bonds that the debt is embodied in. Namely, its value craters for the simple reason that the threat of non-payment makes interest rates shoot up to reflect the actualization of risk. That would certainly set off the booby-trap of derivative interest rate swaps and credit default swaps that have been laid into history’s greatest financial minefield. Thus, the big banks that were supposedly shielded by the ECB shell game of Hide the Debt Pea Somewhere Else, will blow up in a daisy-chain of unpayable obligations.
The net effect of all that will be the disappearance of nominal wealth — it crosses an event horizon into a black hole never to be seen again. The continent discovers it is a lot poorer than it thought. Fifty years of financial engineering comes to the grief it deserves for promoting the idea that it’s possible to get something for nothing.
The same thing more or less awaits the USA, China, and Japan. For the USA in particular the signs of bankruptcy have been starkly visible for a long time outside the bubble regions of New York, Washington, and San Francisco. You see it in the amazing decrepitude of the built environment — the cities and towns left for dead, the struggling suburban strip malls tenanted if at all by wig shops and check-cashing operations, the rusted bridges, pot-holed highways, the Third World style train service. Most sickeningly you see it in a population of formerly earnest, hard-working, basically-educated people with hopes and dreams transformed into a hopeless moiling underclass of tattooed savages dressed in baby clothes devoting their leisure hours (i.e. all their time) to drug-seeking and the erasure of sexual boundaries.
That shocking social and political bankruptcy has, so far, acted as the sinkhole for all America’s financial degeneracy and the entropy it generates. The financial class (the 1 percent who own 40-plus percent of the financialized economy) must think it’s immune to the consequences of its activities, namely racketeering of one kind or another — criminal misconduct and accounting fraud in the service of money-grubbing. They must truly believe that risk has been offloaded into the ring-fenced concentration camps of capital: the derivatives pools. But risk, like rust, never sleeps and can’t be so easily contained. The obstreperous claims of debt only die down with the acknowledged disappearance of wealth, as when a bottom-feeding collection agency attempts to collect a few cents on the dollar of a car loan gone bad.
The US Federal Reserve, like the European Central Bank, sits atop a vault of bonds representing a colossal aggregate promise to repay debt that can never be repaid. Their loss of value will come to be seen for what it is: the disappearance of national wealth. We’ll have our moment, too, when the 50-gallon can full of cement can’t be kicked down the road another inch. It might come when Europe sets the example for a loss of faith in a system run to crime and rot.
James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency, and Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation. His novels include World Made By Hand, The Witch of Hebron, Maggie Darling — A Modern Romance, The Halloween Ball, an Embarrassment of Riches, and many others. He has published three novellas with Water Street Press: Manhattan Gothic, A Christmas Orphan, and The Flight of Mehetabel.
American Dreaming – From G1 To Bilderberg
Off the keyboard of Pepe Escobar
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Published on Russia Today on June 11, 2015
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What’s the connection between the G7 summit in Germany, President Putin’s visit to Italy, the Bilderberg club meeting in Austria, and the TTIP – the US-EU free trade deal – negotiations in Washington?
We start at the G7 in the Bavarian Alps – rather G1 with an added bunch of “junior partners” – as US President Barack Obama gloated about his neo-con induced feat; regiment the EU to soon extend sanctions on Russia even as the austerity-ravaged EU is arguably hurting even more than Russia.
Predictably, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande caved in – even after being forced by realpolitik to talk to Russia and jointly carve the Minsk-2 agreement.
The hypocrisy-meter in the Bavarian Alps had already exploded with a bang right at the pre-dinner speech by EU Council President Donald Tusk, former Prime Minister of Poland and certified Russophobe/warmonger: “All of us would have preferred to have Russia round the G7 table. But our group is not only a group (that shares) political or economic interests, but first of all this is a community of values. And that is why Russia is not among us.”
So this was all about civilized “values” against “Russian aggression.”
The “civilized” G1 + junior partners could not possibly argue whether they would collectively risk a nuclear war on European soil over a Kiev-installed ‘Banderastan’, sorry, “Russian aggression.”
Instead, the real fun was happening behind the scenes. Washington factions were blaming Germany for making the West lose Russia to China, while adult minds in the EU – away from the Bavarian Alps – blamed Washington.
Even juicier is a contrarian view circulating among powerful Masters of the Universe in the US corporate world, not politics. They fear that in the next two to three years France will eventually re-ally with Russia (plenty of historical precedents). And they – once again – identify Germany as the key problem, as in Berlin forcing Washington to get involved in a Prussian ‘Mitteleuropa’ Americans fought two wars to prevent.
As for the Russians – from President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov downwards – a consensus has emerged; it’s pointless to discuss anything substantial considering the pitiful intellectual pedigree – or downright neo-con stupidity – of the self-described “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” Obama administration policy makers and advisers. As for the “junior partners” – mostly EU minions – they are irrelevant, mere Washington vassals.
It would be wishful thinking to expect the civilized “values” gang to propose alternatives for the overwhelming majority of citizens of G7 nations getting anything other than Mac-jobs, or barely surviving as hostages of finance-junkie turbo-capitalism which only benefits the one percent.Rather easier to designate the proverbial scapegoat – Russia – and proceed with NATO-infused fear/warmongering rhetoric.
Iron Lady Merkel also found time to pontificate on climate change – instilling all and sundry to invest in a “low-carbon global economy.” Few noticed that the alleged deadline for full “decarbonization” was set for the end of the 21st century, when this planet will be in deep, deep trouble.

Achtung! Bilderberg!
Obama’s neocon-induced newspeak continues to rule that Russia dreams of recreating the Soviet empire. Now compare it to what President Putin is telling Europe.
Last week, Putin found time to give an interview to the Milan-based Corriere della Sera at 2 am; the interview was published as the Bavarian Alps show went on, and ahead of Putin’s June 10 visit to Italy. Russia’s geopolitical interests and US- Russia relations are depicted in excruciating detail.
So Putin was a persona non grata at the G1 plus junior partners? Well, in Italy he visited the Milan Expo; met Prime Minister Renzi and Pope Francis; reminded everyone about the “privileged economic and political ties” between Italy and Russia; and stressed the 400 Italian companies active in Russia and the million Russian tourists who visit Italy every year.
Crucially, he also evoked that consensus; Russia had represented an alternative view as a member of the G8, but now “other powers” felt they no longer needed it. The bottom line: it’s impossible to have an adult conversation with Obama and friends.
And right on cue, from Berlin –where he was displaying his sterling foreign policy credentials, Jeb Bush, brother of destroyer of Iraq Dubya Bush, fully scripted by his neocon advisers, declared Putin a bully and rallied Europe to fight, what else, “Russian aggression.”

The rhetorical haze over what was really discussed in the Bavarian Alps only began to dissipate at the first chords of the real sound of music; the Bilderberg Group meeting starting this Thursday at the Interalpen-Hotel Tyrol in Austria, only three days after the G1 plus junior partners.
Possible conspiracies aside, Bilderberg may be defined as an ultra-select bunch of elite lobbyists – politicians, US corporate honchos, EU officials, captains of industry, heads of intelligence agencies, European royals – organized annually in a sort of informal think tank/policy-forming format, to advance globalization and all crucial matters related to the overall Atlanticist agenda. Call it the prime Atlanticist Masters of the Universe talkfest.
To make things clear – not that they are big fans of transparency – the composition of the steering committee is here. And this is what they will be discussing in Austria.
Naturally they will be talking about “Russian aggression” (as in who cares about failed Ukraine; what we need is to prevent Russia from doing business with Europe).
Naturally they will be talking about Syria (as in the partition of the country, with the Caliphate already a fact of post-Sykes-Picot life).
Naturally they will be talking about Iran (as in let’s do business, buy their energy and bribe them into joining our club).
But the real deal is really the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – the alleged “free trade” deal between the US and the EU. Virtually all major business/finance lobbyists for the TTIP will be under the same Austrian roof.
And not by accident Bilderberg starts one day before “fast track” presidential authority is to be debated at the US Congress.

WikiLeaks and a ton of BRICS
Enter WikiLeaks, with what in a fairer world would be a crucial spanner in the works.
The fast track authority would extend US presidential powers for no less than six years; that includes the next White House tenant, which might well be ‘The Hillarator’ or Jeb “Putin is a bully” Bush.
This presidential authority to negotiate dodgy deals includes not only the TTIP but also the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA).
WikiLeaks, just in time, published the Healthcare Annex to the secret draft “Transparency” chapter of the TPP, along with each country’s negotiating position. No wonder this draft is secret. And there’s nothing “transparent” about it; it’s an undisguised hold-up of national healthcare authorities by Big Pharma.
The bottom line is that these three mega-deals – TTP, TTIP and TiSA – are the ultimate template of what could be politely described as global corporate governance, a Bilderberg wet dream. The losers: nation-states, and the very concept of Western democracy. The winners: mega-corporations.
Julian Assange, in a statement, succinctly nailed it “It is a mistake to think of the TPP as a single treaty. In reality there are three conjoined mega-agreements, the TiSA, the TPP and the TTIP, all of which strategically assemble into a grand unified treaty, partitioning the world into the West versus the rest. This 'Great Treaty' is described by the Pentagon as the economic core to the US military's 'Asia Pivot.' The architects are aiming no lower than the arc of history. The Great Treaty is taking shape in complete secrecy, because along with its undebated geostrategic ambitions it locks into place an aggressive new form of transnational corporatism for which there is little public support."
So this is the real Atlanticist agenda – the final touches being applied in the arc spanning the G1 + added junior partners to Bilderberg (expect a lot of crucial phone calls from Austria to Washington this Friday). NATO on trade. Pivoting to Asia excluding Russia and China. The West vs. the rest.
Now for the counterpunch. As the show in the Bavarian Alps unrolled, the first BRICS Parliamentarian Forum was taking place in Moscow – ahead of the BRICS summit in Ufa next month.
Neocons – with Obama in tow – knock themselves out dreaming that Russia has become “isolated” from the rest of the world because of their sanctions. Since then Moscow has signed major economic/strategic contracts with at least twenty nations. Next month, Russia will host the BRICS summit – 45 percent of the world’s population, a GDP equivalent to the EU, and soon bigger than the current G7 – as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, when India and Pakistan, currently observers, will be accepted as full members.
G1 plus junior partners? Bilderberg? Get a job; you’re not the only show in town, any town.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
The Battle of Yesterday vs Tomorrow
Off the keyboard of John Ward
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Published on The Slog on April 19, 2015
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ANALYSIS: Why the standoff between Greece and the EU is really the first major battle in the war between Yesterday and Tomorrow
As the days drag on towards some kind of dénouement to what is rapidly becoming the silliest, longest and most empty threat of a death sentence in political history, I continue to be amazed that the Western media are reporting the Greece-eurogroupe ‘deadlock’ as if it was a purely technical matter.
There are only two elements of the ‘crisis’ that concern me: the emotional dimension of an at times infuriating but fundamentally sound culture I’ve loved for over forty years being pelted by a salvo of Brussels sprouts, controlling sauerkrats, and past-sell-by date Frankfurters; and the former politics student’s fascination with the factions and rivalries on both sides.
If you’re a Python nut like me, then you will remember the Life of Brian sequence where Graham Chapman innocently asks the anal splinter-group leader Michael Palin if “we” are the People’s Group for the Liberation of Palestine, and Palin snaps back, “Are you f**king mad? We f**kin’ spit on the PGLOP. We, my friend, are the People’s Army for Palestine Liberation. There’s a world of difference”.
Sadly, a great deal of contemporary in-fighting between Middle East opponents of the US, Israel and NATO have proved in the 36 years since that movie how madness will eventually – somewhere – become reality. But it is also one of the strongest arguments against large States like Europe, China, the US and Russia that the citizens reach a point where a substantial minority no longer feel any affection for the much-vaunted body. For them, it’s more of a cadaver: a giant corpse they simple cannot remember as the flower of their youth.
More and more, this anthropological reality both colours and muddies European affairs.
The current impasse/standoff/crisis/negotiation is not – let’s get this straight for starters – a conflict between the EU and Greece. It is not even a war between national liberty and superstate dictatorship.
Rather, it’s the first battle in what could be a long war between yesterday and tomorrow. And be aware: the battle is no way as simple as ‘EU yesterday vs Greek tomorrow’: this is a battle in which there are more false flags, civil wars around the edges and power struggles going on than in the emerging Nazi Party of 1931.
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Let’s deal quickly with my first concern: although depicted as the punishment of corrupt Greek politicians, backhanding officials and tax-evading taverna owners, none of that is even closely related to the facts. Far from punishing Nia Demokratia, PASOK and their serially unpleasant leaders, the Troika has insisted from Day One that it will only deal with these gargoyles. This is the same principle as hanging the war criminals at Nuremburg….up to but not including rocket scientists the victors wanted on their sides.
Germany largely benefited from corrupt officials (especially during the various insane arms deals with Greece) rather than suffering in any way; and precious few of those Fat Crats have been brought to justice….although Syriza is now on the case.
And finally, small businesses evade tax in Greece because the tax system is corrupt, not through greed in many cases: they know that every pol and bureacrat wants a kafelaki (small envelope). And people evade the Troika taxes today because they see them for what they are: a disgraceful attempt to pick the pocket of the vagrant in the gutter. I live in France now, and I’ve visited Greece between forty and fifty times in the last half-century; everything I see related to le noir francais is exactly the same as in Greece – except for one thing: it’s a far bigger problem in France.
I’m told by some that the desire to evade tax became an act of patriotic resistance during the Ottoman hegemony over Greece, but that was a long, long time ago: more accurate, I think, is the phrase used to me over and over again: “It’s a national sport”….and the trophy is nothing more than sticking it to the depraved elites that have been sitting on real Greeks for decades.
The punishment meted out by the Troika fits not the crime, but the greed, geopolitical ambitions and cynical control freakery of its three prongs – Wall Street, the US/EU, and Berlin/ECB interest groups. This is far from empty conspiracist assertion: the investment banking firms and Hedge Funds got clean away with a fat profit during the initial bailouts, Schäuble stands accused of conspiring with Venizelos to exaggerate the size of debt hole in 2010, a German-controlled and run concept of Fiskalunion has emerged directly from this totally unnecessary mess, the federalisation of the EU has been accelerated, and above all the euro was saved to die another day.
Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal are on Calvary at the moment, but they’re dying to cleanse a worthless currency of its flaws, not to save anyone’s soul. And no amount of crucifixions from here to Warsaw via Budapest are going to remove the euro’s flaws.
Greece is saddled with an obscene debt and carpet-bombed economic structure because Schäuble wanted to convince the markets of eurozone viability, Trichet’s borrowing controls were hopelessly lax, Goldman wanted to sell credit, Sarkozy was terrified of the effect on his banks, and Berlin wanted – plus ca change – to run Europe using the best alternative to military force: the munnneeee.
There is little difference in general substance between QE and Zirp killing economies across the globe, and ClubMed austerity killing most of the ezone economy: except of course, the one in Germany. Gott in Himmel: perish the thought that such a thing might occur.
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Nobody in the neoliberal owned and controlled press is ever going to accept that version of events, no matter how empirically databased it is. But no other explanation can explain the consistent actions of those in charge of the fiscal policies involved….policies that cannot possibly be related to sound economic actions – or even sound minds.
The mistake many observers and commentators make is to get the motive for the Greek tragedy wrong: get it right, and everything makes complete sense. Read the MSM account, and none of it does.
However, as I pointed out at the start of this mini-essay, there’s no simple tug-of-war going on. The best analogy I can summon up for the moment is to see the EU/ECB/Berlin attack on Greece as akin to Abe Lincoln deciding to attack Samuria-Shogun-Meiji fractured Japan just after the first Battle of Bull Run.
The two ‘sides’ in 2015 square up as follows:
EC vs Eurogroupe vs Frankfurt vs IMF vs ECB vs Berlin vs Paris vs UK
vs
Syriza vs KKE vs PASOK vs Nia Demokrita vs Golden Dawn vs To Potami vs ephiles vs ephobes
Without getting into too much detail, Jean-Claude Junker’s power base is the EC. Inside that, he has an anti-austerity rebuilding fund of allegedly €350bn, whose purpose he has kept deliberately vague. He befriended Alexis Tsipras, and could shaft the eurogroupe royally if he decided to invest it in Greece on a bigger scale than at present. This is because the eurogroupe’s attempt to wrest power from Juncker gets up his nasal orifice – and threatens the Cyprus-style tax evasion racket he runs in Luxembourg.
But the Frankfurt Bundesbank hardliners think the eurogroupe and its ally the ECB will have a disastrous effect on money supply and inflation via QE…plus (they assert) it was a mistake to let the US-controlled IMF and its mathematically dyslexic boss Christine Lagarde loose anywhere in Europe. In Berlin, however, Schäuble wants to have total control over the reins of euro-fiscal policy, and so would do anything to vapourise ECB boss Mario Draghi…while Chancellor Merkel (whom Schäuble dislikes, but who has the electoral appeal he lacks) has similar doubts to me about what Draghi’s really up to: is he working for the euro, or is he working for its replacement, the Dolleuro?
Paris, meanwhile, is infinitely more guilty of fiscal vandalism than Greece (as are Germany and Holland) but is no longer avoiding the consequences of its soi-largesse with quite the ease it was. The French Establishment has been rattled by some of the fiscal disciplinary methods imposed on France after the March eurogroupe summit: but Berlin must beware of pushing too many French voters towards the undiluted anti-EU nationalism of Marine Le Pen’s Front Nationale.
And last but not least, dear old Blighty stuck out there in the island limbo of “Ukip if you want to, but we’re wide awake, and we want out”.
You may think the Sceptred Isle doesn’t count, but I would suggest you’re wrong. At the moment, the Eunatics face threats on four ClubMed fronts, interference from the US, and an allegedly weak Putinesque Russia which suggests that it isn’t either weak or stupid. The last thing the EU elites need is to roil the markets with a secession request from Britain in 2018….even if it is only England by then.
This does, I think, go a long way to explaining why Draghi has of late switched tack, and begun persuading his ‘colleagues’ that the time is not yet quite right for the Greeks to default. Much smart money had been targeting April 26th as the moment of truth for Athens. But yesterday the ECB boss told a Washington audience that he “won’t even contemplate” the possibility of a Greek default on its debt repayments during April, because such an event would throw the eurozone into “uncharted waters.” This from the man who six weeks ago claimed that Greek default would be no more than a gnat-bite on the bum for eurobanks…because this time, the system “is prepared”. Yeh, right: that must be why he arm-twisted the ELA into coughing up the liquidity to help Greece pay off the last IMF kilo of flesh, sorry, installment.
Far more money is now being placed on a Greek default on or after May 9th. And spookily, that just happens to be two days after the UK General Election finishes. I think it would be safe to say that – were a Greek default to throw everything into European bond-spiking confusion before April 26th – there would be a massive Ukip surge, as well as potential pressure on the UK’s George Osborne in terms of borrowing rates. The continued UK national debt explosion is, after all, the Chancellor’s Achilles heel.
So there you have it. Or rather, you don’t: because twixt you, me, the gatepost and the other girls, trying to discern 8 x 8 possibilities producing 64 possible outcomes (when any new left-field factor could make that 4096 scenarios) is the original mug’s game.
Much better, I’d opine, to stick to the basics. And I’ve remained consistent about these since this rapidly dwindling time-window began last February 24th.
Those who would rather have a meteorite collide with Earth than give up on the euro project have far, far more to lose than a nation of 11.5m people who would (in my view) be much better off deserting the euro. But there remains that Greek inferiority complex pride thing of not wanting to be the catalyst of destroying a single market that acts as an economic and political bulwark against American multinational domination of the Globe.
I think that viewpoint to be muddled, but then I’m not Greek, or foraging in the Athens garbage cans. My gut feeling is that Varoufakis underestimated the Cosa Nostra nastiness of those with whom he must deal, and Troika2 underestimated the fatigue of the Hellenic population at large with being made a scapegoat.
Either way, a lot of very sour derivative bets placed on euro success cannot be allowed to trigger an omni-directional bazooka aimed at Wall Street. Sorry to repeat myself, but I still think the high face-cards are in the Greek hand.
EuroSoap
Off the keyboard of John Ward
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Published on The Slog on March 20, 2015
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TSIPRAS/MERKEL SUMMIT: You thought Greek politics complicated? Wait until you tot up the seismic splits in the EU
Take a close look at the timeline since Thursday night’s mini-summit marathon between Alexis Tsipras and Angela Merkel.
After a 3am Friday finish, German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the meeting as “good and constructive,” but warned that the Greek government will have to meet commitments before it can access EU money. She gave Syriza exactly seven days to offer fully detailed “reform” proposals to Troika2, and then left clutching several haunches of Venison and 683 sausages for her beloved fridge.
A few hours later, however, Jean-Claude Juncker – the President of the European Commission (EC) – announced a completely unconditional 2 billion euro contribution immediately available to Greece to boost growth, tackle youth unemployment and help with the “humanitarian crisis”. Juncker said the cash for this would come from “unused EU development funds”.
When I called the EC press office this afternoon and asked how this circle might be squared, there was much scurrying about and promises of getting back to me…none of which materialised.
Those EU schisms in full
This is what’s really going on here: pissed off by the degree to which Germany and the Troikanauts are increasingly adopting the Führerprinzip in relation to EU affairs, the EC as led by J-CJ is doing everything in its power to be good-cop to Greece in general, and Tsipras in particular. This is a good old-fashioned Nazi Party power struggle, and there is every opportunity for Athens to exploit it.
But equally, we must remember that on another level entirely, Francois Hollande of France got away almost scot-free last week on deficit failures that far outweigh those of Greece….but was forced to bring in Troika-demanded laws about tax evasion…and ECB diktats about bank liquidity. This has not gone down well in his Party.
The Parti Socialiste de France doesn’t like this crap because (like many of us) they foresee the wholesale handing over of millions of votes to Marine Le Pen’s Front Nationale.
So then: we have the EC at war with Berlin and Troika2, plus France at war with Frankfurt. But just when you thought you had it sussed, more fractures appear.
For Wolfgang Schäuble is at war with Merkel over his single-minded obsession to become Supreme Leader of the as yet unformed Fiskalunion…and fighting a second front against Mario Draghi’s ECB, which in turn is fighting on another front entirely with Jens Weidemann and the German Central Bank…who rightly think that Draghula is working not for the euro, but a planned eurodollar spookily approaching parity with, um, the euro. And Merkel too distrusts the ECB boss’s motives….preferring as she does to keep her options open on the subject of which way to jump in the Dollar v Rublenimbi chasm.
Confused? You will be after this latest episode of Eurosoap. But there are far more plot lines and faultlines to develop before your confusion is comprehensively constructed.
There is the coming UK election, and the increasing likelihood of the ‘biggest’ Party needing to do a deal with EU-secessionists. There is the growing secessionist and europhobic tendency in Italy. There is Podemos support in Spain growing with every act of defiance from Greece. There is the Austro-German bank collapse epidemiology threatening everyone from Santander to Deutsche. And there remains the implacable unwillingness of Viktor Orban in Hungary to have anything to do with globalism in general, or the euro in particular.
Face facts: the EU is imploding.
Greece “On the Brink”
Off the keyboard of John Ward
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Published on The Slog on March 3, 2015
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One news for the rich, and another for the poor
Greece, it seems, is suddenly in a load of trouble. A clear blue azure sky of eternal hope is threatened by large clouds. Syriza isn’t cutting it. It’s all over bar the shouting. Greece is going to be a pariah “on the same level as Zimbabwe” says the Daily Telegraph. “They’ve got ten days left” a senior journalist told me yesterday.
The situation with Greece is the same as it’s been since mid 2012: the only things that have changed in the last month or so are (1) a government the Troika doesn’t like (2) Draghi suddenly quoting “the rules” to keep Athens out of the QE money-pissing display, and threaten to cut off the ELA (3) the very oligarchy Syriza wants to get rid of withdrawing its banked money – egged on by the ECB – and (4) the Germany-ECB-IMF Troika humiliating the new Greek government. Take all those things away, and the fiscal situation is precisely the same as it was under little Antonikis from Kalamata. The differences outlined above can be summed up thus: a systematic undermining of a Sovereign State’s viability by malign influencers who don’t GAF about the welfare of the largely innocent and impoverished Greek citizenry.
Suddenly, the rules are important. Suddenly, an organisation unaudited since its inception says eurozone regulations must be obeyed. Suddenly, a central bank that raped Cyprus an subordinated holders of Greek bonds says the rules are important. Suddenly, the finance minister of a country (that took Greek money for two submarines and only ever supplied one) tells us that “People simply must obey the rules”.
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