Apr 152024
 


Charles Sprague Pearce Lamentations over the Death of the First-Born of Egypt 1877

 

Trump Set For Monday ‘Fake Biden Trial’ With ‘Highly Conflicted’ Judge (ZH)
19 Retired Generals, Admirals File SCOTUS Brief Against Trump Immunity Bid (ET)
Judge Upholds Georgia’s Voter Citizenship Verification Requirements (ET)
Low IQ (Michael Tracey)
Will the American Oligarchy Accept Limits or Choose World War Three? (NC)
America Has a Problem With Love and Fear (Suchkov)
A Tempering of American-Israeli Aggression? (Paul Craig Roberts)
Scott Ritter: Iran’s Retaliatory Attack ‘Reestablished Deterrence’ (Sp.)
Netanyahu Called Off Retaliation Strikes After Speaking To Biden – NYT (RT)
Russia Slams UNSC for Ignoring Attack on Iranian Consulate (Sp.)
Zelensky Takes Advantage of Iran-Israel Crisis to Plead for More Money (Miles)
Ukrainian FM Publicly Blackmails West Over Oil Prices (RT)
Germany Escalates Donbass Conflict, Kiev Says Frontline is Deteriorating (Sp.)
Germany Joins Israel In Dock For Genocide (SCF)
Royal Marines To Lead ‘Dunkirk-style’ Evacuation Of Britons In Middle East (DM)

 

 

 

 

Scholz
https://twitter.com/i/status/1779509472391495791

 

 

Coastguy

 

 

 

 

Constanza
https://twitter.com/i/status/1779280505852060066

 

 

 

 

 

 

I thought we established that Michael Cohen had an affair with Stormy Daniels, paid for with Trump’s money. Anyhoo, it should be a spectacle.

Trump Set For Monday ‘Fake Biden Trial’ With ‘Highly Conflicted’ Judge (ZH)

Former President Trump will take his 2024 campaign to New York on Monday, where he’ll be sitting in a Manhattan courtroom for what he decried as a “Fake Biden Trial” to face 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with the Stormy Daniels ‘hush money’ embroglio. The trial comes after an unsuccessful bid to adjourn the case due to overwhelming pretrial publicity, which Judge Juan Merchan denied, calling adjournment “not tenable.” Trump has taken to Truth Social in recent days, suggesting on Sunday that Merchan is “perhaps the most highly conflicted Judge in New York State history,” who gave Trump’s legal team insufficient time to analyze “hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that D.A. Alvin Bragg illegally hid, disguised, and held back from us.” As the WSJ notes, “The 34 felony counts in the indictment are all tied to records that prosecutors said Trump falsified as he reimbursed Cohen for the Daniels deal. They include 11 invoices, 12 general ledger entries and 11 checks.”

As Mike Shedlock of Mishtalk notes, expect a media circus. “A Recording Crime. District Attorney Alvin Bragg took each receipt, invoice, and ledger receipt and made a separate felony charge out of each of them. Then Bragg twisted those charges into an intent to commit other crimes. Yet Trump is not charged with other crimes, only falsifying records. And it’s plausible that Trump had no direct knowledge of the mess. This story goes back to Michael Cohen, a former attorney of Donald Trump, who landed in prison for by paying adult-film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 in 2016 to keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump a decade earlier. The Journal notes that Falsifying business records is a misdemeanor under New York state law, but it can be elevated to a felony if records were falsified to conceal or commit another crime. What other crime? Trump is charged with none.”

Meanwhile as Politico reports, in addition to taking a “wrecking ball to Michael Cohen,” with nearly half of the respondents in a recent Politico/Ipsos poll saying that Cohen is not honest… Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s “Star Witness, Trump could try “asking the judge to give the jury the option of convicting him on lesser, misdemeanor offenses instead of the felony counts that have actually been brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his team of prosecutors.” Journalist Laura Loomer, a Trump supporter, has posted several receipts over the past several weeks showing Merchan’s various conflicts – including the fact that his daughter professionally brags about “doing ground-breaking, historical work for clients” including “Kamala Harris, Adam Schiff, and others.” Loomer also noted that Andrew Laufer, the lawyer for Michael Cohen (DA Alan Bragg’s “Star witness”), is tight with NY Attorney General Letitia James – who Merchan’s wife worked for in what Loomer describes as a “major conflict of interest.”

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“The threat of future prosecution and imprisonment would become a political cudgel to influence the most sensitive and controversial presidential decisions..”

19 Retired Generals, Admirals File SCOTUS Brief Against Trump Immunity Bid (ET)

More than a dozen former Defense Department officials, generals, and admirals filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing against former President Donald Trump’s presidential immunity arguments. It comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on the former president’s assertions that he should enjoy immunity from prosecution for activity that he carried out while he was president. The former president invoked that argument after he was accused by federal prosecutors of attempting to illegally overturn the 2020 election results. The amicus brief’s signatories include former CIA Director Michael Hayden, retired Admiral Thad Allen, retired Gen. George Casey, retired Gen. Charles Krulak, and more. They claimed that granting President Trump immunity against criminal claims could lead to activity that put U.S. national security at risk.

“The notion of such immunity, both as a general matter, and also specifically in the context of the potential negation of election results, threatens to jeopardize our nation’s security and international leadership,” their brief stated. “Particularly in times like the present, when anti-democratic, authoritarian regimes are on the rise worldwide, such a threat is intolerable and dangerous.” The arguments submitted by President Trump will “risk jeopardizing America’s standing as a guardian of democracy in the world and further feeding the spread of authoritarianism, thereby threatening the national security of the United States and democracies around the world,” the group added. The former secretary of Defense under President Trump, Mark Esper, was critical of their submission to the Supreme Court, arguing during a CNN interview that he “would prefer to see retired admirals and generals not get involved.”

But President Trump’s lawyers have contended that the president’s office cannot function without immunity from the threat of prosecution because it could “incapacitate every future president with de facto blackmail and extortion while in office and condemn him to years of post-office trauma at the hands of political opponents,” arguing that such a phenomenon is playing out right now after the former president was indicted multiple times last year. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had earlier issued a ruling against President Trump’s arguments that he should be declared immune from prosecution. The appeals process, meanwhile, has put on hold the former president’s trial in Washington. “A denial of criminal immunity would incapacitate every future president with de facto blackmail and extortion while in office, and condemn him to years of post-office trauma at the hands of political opponents. The threat of future prosecution and imprisonment would become a political cudgel to influence the most sensitive and controversial presidential decisions, taking away the strength, authority and decisiveness of the presidency,” according to President Trump’s filing issued last month.

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They want every Democrat to be able to cast 1,000 votes.

Judge Upholds Georgia’s Voter Citizenship Verification Requirements (ET)

A federal judge has dismissed a legal challenge to Georgia’s voter citizenship verification requirements, keeping in place the state’s process of cross-checking citizenship status to determine voter eligibility and handing a win to election integrity advocates. Judge Eleanor Ross of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia issued a ruling on April 11 that dismisses a lawsuit brought by a coalition of advocacy groups nearly six years ago that claimed Georgia’s voter citizenship verification requirements unfairly discriminated against naturalized citizens, who are more likely to be people of color. Following a three-day trial, the judge ruled that all four of the plaintiffs’ claims—including that the protocols violated multiple federal laws, the U.S. Constitution, and unfairly burdened the right to vote—are dismissed.

In so doing, the judge sided with a motion for summary judgment made in 2021 by the defendant, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who argued that the state’s protocols for matching naturalized citizens’ voter registrations with the state’s citizenship records were “entirely reasonable” and placed a “minimum burden” on applicants. Mr. Raffensperger argued that, in almost every case, the requirement was fulfilled by matching driver’s licence or state identification numbers submitted for voter registration with corresponding records at the Georgia Department of Driver Services (DDS) to confirm citizenship status. When a naturalized citizen registers to vote in Georgia, their county registrar verifies proof of citizenship using DDS data. If that voter’s citizenship cannot be verified through that database, the onus is on the voter to submit proof of citizenship within 26 months or their voter registration application will be canceled.

The plaintiffs have alleged that DDS data is often outdated, leading many naturalized citizens’ voter registrations to be flagged and canceled unfairly. Mr. Raffensperger disputed the claim that this issue affected many people, arguing in his motion that “any arguable burden on this small group of people to demonstrate they are now citizens is minimal and does not go beyond the ‘usual burdens of voting’ because it can be resolved as simply as showing the same photo identification that every Georgia voter is required to show in order to vote in person in Georgia.” He also argued that the citizenship process serves a “compelling interest” in ensuring that only eligible voters are allowed to cast a vote, an argument raised by election integrity advocates across the country amid various disputes over voting rules.

The plaintiffs sued Mr. Raffensperger in 2018, arguing that the state’s protocols for matching naturalized citizens’ voter registrations with the state’s citizenship records violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. They also claimed that these protocols put an unfair burden on the right to vote, in violation of 1st and 14th Amendment protections, while also claiming that the requirements ran counter to the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) by delaying or denying qualified voters from registering to cast ballots.

The coalition of groups asked the court to rule that the citizenship matching protocols were illegal, and to permanently block their enforcement. The case eventually went to trial on April 8, 2024, leading to a favorable ruling for Mr. Raffensperger and delivering a win to election integrity advocates more generally. “Ensuring that only U.S. citizens vote in our elections is critically important to secure and accurate elections,” Mr. Raffensperger said in a statement praising the ruling. “Georgia’s citizenship verification process is common sense and it works. With this ruling, we are able to continue ensuring that only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections,” he added.

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X thread.

Low IQ (Michael Tracey)

The self-serving Low IQ history of how Trump’s assassination of Iranian general Soleimani supposedly unleashed an era of peace and tranquility across the Middle East is so painfully idiotic. In one of the most brutishly stupid acts of Trump’s entire presidency, he and his rabidly interventionist Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, manufactured a fake pretext to launch the brazen, region-destabilizing attack. Trump fabricated what his administration claimed was a “self-defense” rationale for the assassination — arguably the most severe instance of direct state-on-state warfare between the US and Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Trump and the hardcore interventionists and regime change fanatics with which he filled his administration actually tried to invoke the 2002 AUMF in Iraq — yes, the Iraq War resolution that Joe Biden infamously voted for — as justification for the Soleimani strike.

They lied and claimed there was an “imminent threat” to the US, parroting the Bush Administration’s language used to sell the Iraq invasion. They even absurdly claimed that part of the rationale for the assassination was that Iran had provided material support to the 9/11 hijackers. No argument was too preposterous. The drone-bombing of one of the most prominent figures in Iranian society effectively destroyed any prospect of future diplomatic engagement between the US and Iran. Millions flooded the streets in protest, including in Iraq, where the drone strike took place. US embassies and other installations were hit with rockets and ransacked.

The Iraqi parliament demanded the immediate expulsion of all US troops from the country, but rather than take this opportunity to finally extricate US forces, Trump refused and kept them there. Reprisal attacks were launched against US troops and continued for months, with 62 soldiers receiving Purple Hearts for the traumatic brain injuries they endured from Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes. Trump loaded up his administration with anti-Iran regime change obsessives like Pompeo, Mike Pence, John Bolton, Nikki Haley, among others, deferred to the fanatically “pro-Israel” prerogatives of his chief financial patron Sheldon Adelson, and was heralded by Bibi Netanyahu for carrying out the most hardcore pro-Israel and “anti-Iran” policy agenda of any President in US history.

This was all part of the so-called “maximum pressure” strategy against Iran favored by Netanyahu and the fanatically pro-Israel “GOP establishment” to whom Trump essentially handed over control of his administration. As with many issues, there’s been more continuity between the Trump and Biden administrations than either like to let on, with the cratering of US-Iran relations continuing to this day. Trump still brags about how much pointless suffering his “crippling sanctions” (a term borrowed from Obama) inflicted on ordinary Iranian citizens. On the one hand, MAGA will brag about how un-warlike Trump allegedly was, but on the other, they’ll brag about how awesome it was that he drone-assassinated Iran’s top military official and hurtled the region into chaos — the consequences of which still reverberate today. This pro-Trump argument is idiotically schizophrenic, but that’s nothing new for Low IQ partisans.

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“The entire post-WWII elite American mindset is built on the foundation of worldwide profit expansion via silicon and fire..”

Will the American Oligarchy Accept Limits or Choose World War Three? (NC)

The US is a market state that is dominated by and run for transnational capital. Its foreign policy and the military are a tool of the American oligarchy. Therefore, any serious policy discussion needs to deal with the fact that national interests as they’re expressed today are not in any real sense national but representative of the interests of a small cohort of the super wealthy. When US officials go on about spreading “freedom,” they’re not lying. It’s just their idea of freedom is a state devoted to high profits – free from the political whims of local populations that could degrade an investment’s expected return. Let’s remember there likely wouldn’t be any problem with Russia had Putin not put an end to the 1990s shock therapy administered by the Western finance capitalists who were making a killing by pillaging Russian resources. Like Bert Hoover, they’re haunted by that opportunity snatched away from them, and they’ve been trying to get it back for a quarter century now.

The question is will American capital ever voluntarily give up? Will it ever say “okay, we’re satisfied with what we’ve got here, you do your thing in your sphere of influence”? It’s not like Moscow and Beijing haven’t tried. Russia for example floated the idea of joining NATO or working out some other security arrangement. For decades after the end of the USSR, Russia tried to be accepted into the West’s club to no avail. China, too, constantly repeats the refrain that the world is big enough for both Beijing and Washington. It invited the US to join it in its Belt and Road Initiative. The US could have helped steer projects that would have benefited both countries. While such cooperation between the two big powers wouldn’t be a panacea for all the world’s problems, it would likely mean a lot better spot than current one. Instead the US wanted the whole pie and instead we got the TPP, sanctions, export bans, a new Cold War, a spy balloon scandal, the disastrous effort to weaken Russia before taking on China, the successful effort to sever Europe from Eurasia to disastrous effect for Europe, and the desire to see a Ukraine sequel in Taiwan and/or the South China Sea.

There is a lot of confusion over why the West keeps escalating in a losing effort. Why, for example, are Western governments going around begging for shells to send Ukraine rather than accepting the L? The desperation seems to stem from the creeping realization that their system is coming undone. The entire post-WWII elite American mindset is built on the foundation of worldwide profit expansion via silicon and fire, and if they throw everything at Russia and lose, well a whole new domino theory could come into play – one where parasitic Western finance capital is driven back. (Granted it might in most cases be replaced by a more local form, but it’s nonetheless frightening for the Western honchos.) Just look at what’s happening to France in Françafrique! And the US in the Middle East!

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Machiavelli: “..a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred.”

America Has a Problem With Love and Fear (Suchkov)

In the early 1990s, when Washington was celebrating victory over the USSR, proclaiming “the end of history” and believing that the whole world would now rise up under the banner of liberal democracy and the market economy, Gates became head of the CIA. The main task at the time was to make the most of the “unipolar moment” – to widen the gap between the US and its competitors, to turn yesterday’s enemies into friends, friends into allies, and them make them all vassals. Another fashionable concept of the time – which still occupies the minds of many internationalists – was “soft power”. This justified America’s global dominance by virtue of the appeal of its culture (music, cinema, education). No one wanted to argue with this, especially when videotapes of action films like Rambo and Terminator, and later the queues at the first Moscow McDonald’s, clearly proved the validity of such an ideology. American pop culture made the world extremely permeable to American ideas and interests. The task of various structures, including the one headed by Gates, was to make as many ordinary people (and politicians, of course) around the world fall in love with America, believe in the myth of the “American Dream” and adopt it as their way of life.

As the “unipolar moment” faded and the international environment became more difficult for the US, it became more and more difficult to get others to feel the love. Especially after the bombing of Yugoslavia. A brief period of global sympathy for the Americans after the attacks of 11 September 2001 was replaced by outrage over the invasion of Iraq. Even some of the closest NATO allies did not approve of the illegal intervention. In the post-Soviet space, attempts at “colour revolutions” – to replace rulers who did not love America fervently enough – were somewhat effective in the short-term, but exacerbated disagreements with Moscow. Vladimir Putin’s manifesto speech at the Munich Conference in 2007 signalled the end of the romance with the US, not only for Russia but for many other countries as well. Most states were still open to American cultural and educational products, but Washington’s policies were increasingly perceived critically. In acute situations, dissatisfaction with America as a power was projected onto cultural images associated with it – images of windows broken at McDonald’s, Stars and Stripes set on fire, etc.

Gradually, American soft power collided with its use of hard power. Washington used NGOs to invest billions in public diplomacy and educational exchange programmes, in the manipulation of “civil society” and the media. However, Washington’s coercive actions undermined efforts to win the sympathy of the world’s peoples. Meanwhile, Gates returned to Washington as head of the Pentagon to rescue the Bush Jr. administration from the fiasco in Afghanistan and Iraq. Led by Vice President Dick Cheney, the team was less concerned with winning the love of the rest of the world than with Theodore Roosevelt’s principle: ‘If you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” The term “neoconservatives” is associated more with Republicans. In fact, it is a large and influential bipartisan, ideologically charged, group in the establishment for whom the primacy of “make them afraid of us” over “encourage them to love us” is unquestioned.

Barack Obama’s 2008 election victory swung the ideological pendulum in the opposite direction, favouring love over fear. Administrators from the Clinton presidency returned to the White House, and Obama himself spoke of ‘inclusion’, a new globalisation and hopes for a democratic revival. Gates was the only secretary of state to retain his post under the new Democratic president. Even during the election campaign, Obama had promised to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, a pragmatic, cross-party Secretary of Defence seemed the best solution. The aforementioned Roosevelt had an apt saying for this case: “Speak softly, but carry a big stick”. Obama was responsible for the former, Gates for the latter. “However, the “big stick” did not help much: by the end of the 2010s, pro-Iranian forces were ruling a fragmented Iraq, and in Afghanistan, attempts to put an end to the Taliban (an organisation banned in the Russian Federation) by increasing the US contingent and allocating astronomical sums of money to the authorities in Kabul did not yield results.

[..] Interestingly, the US has stopped loving itself and is actively reaching for nostalgia in own identity and the recent past – especially in culture and politics. The resulting yearning for a time when America was “great” calls for efforts to regain that greatness by any means necessary. Whether leadership should be based on fear or love is one of the key questions in the theory and practice of leadership. In his sixteenth-century treatise The Prince, the Florentine thinker and politician Niccolo Machiavelli argued: “The answer is that one would like to be both the one and the other; but because it is difficult to combine them, it is far safer to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.” This maxim has been adopted by many rulers in different historical periods. But problems began for those who forgot that Machiavelli went on to warn:“a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred.”

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“It is the absence of countervailing power in the Middle East that has made the region a tinderbox..”

A Tempering of American-Israeli Aggression? (Paul Craig Roberts)

It has taken a long time for Zionist Israel to discredit itself. It did so with Israel’s declared policy of genocide of the Palestinians. As it was our bombs, missiles, and money that Israel used, America was also discredited. The self-inflicted diminution of American prestige and its isolation as the supporter of Israel’s attempted genocide of Palestine has altered the balance of power and influence in the world. With the impoverished Houthis standing up to mighty America and Israel, and with Iran finally standing up to Israel, it is possible that the American-Israeli aggression leading to nuclear war has been tempered. The recent firing of Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland is another possible indication.

Haaretz, the only objective Israeli newspaper, says Netanyahu should accept that the Iranian response was a limited attack provoked by Israel’s attack that murdered Iranian officials in Damascus and refrain from further military action. US bases throughout the Middle East and Israel’s Dimona nuclear arsenal are easy targets for a heavy Iranian attack. If Israel pushes further, a major war will erupt. Perhaps it will dawn on Putin and Xi to stabilize the Middle East with announcement of a Russian-Chinese-Iranian mutual defense treaty. It is the absence of countervailing power in the Middle East that has made the region a tinderbox.

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Scott Ritter @RealScottRitter: “I spent one decade protecting Israel from Iraqi missiles. I spent another decade trying to protect Israel from Iranian missiles. All Israel had to do was try to live in peace and harmony with its neighbors. Israel proved not to be up to the task. Israel deserves everything it has coming to it.”

Scott Ritter: Iran’s Retaliatory Attack ‘Reestablished Deterrence’ (Sp.)

Iran’s mission to the United Nations stated earlier that Tehran’s retaliatory drone and missile attack against Israel had “concluded.” The “military action” was a response to Israel’s “aggression against our diplomatic premises in Damascus,” it said, adding that the strike “hit designated targets.” By launching its retaliatory drone and missile attack on Israel, Iran “reestablished deterrence,” former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter told Sputnik. “Israel believed that it could launch a strike against Iran and suffer no consequence. That is no longer the case,” Ritter noted. As Israeli military officials survey the damage done to their bases, “they understand the following: that Iran deliberately chose not to inflict extremely lethal action against Israel,” the analyst remarked. bIran launched a massive drone and missile attack against Israel overnight, assisted by Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthis.

Over 300 projectiles were fired at Israeli territory from Iran, with Iran’s mission to the United Nations stating that its retaliatory attack on Israel had “concluded,” and that the strike “hit designated targets.” Israel’s military has claimed that 99% of the projectiles were intercepted.nbIran’s strike was designed to send a signal to Israel and the United States, “that it could do what it did in Nevatim, at Ramona, anywhere in Israel, anywhere in the Middle East, and there was nothing the United States or Israel could do in response.” “This is deterrence. This means that in the future, if either Israel or the United States plan on carrying out an action against Iran, they have to weigh in the consequences of their actions knowing that Iran has the capacity to reach out and touch any place, any spot, any target in the region in Israel or out of Israel, and there’s nothing anybody could do to stop that,” the retired US Marine Corps intelligence officer said.

US President Joe Biden issued a statement on Iran’s attack against Israel after he spoke on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The POTUS condemned the strike “in the strongest possible terms.” He also reaffirmed Washington’s “ironclad commitment” to help support Israel, and added that there were no attacks on US forces or facilities on Saturday, but that the US “will remain vigilant to all threats.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US does “not seek escalation,” but will “continue to support” Israel’s defense. “I will be consulting with allies and partners in the region and around the world in the hours and days ahead,” he added. Weighing in on the flurry of talks between US and Israeli leaders, Scott Ritter said: “This is why President Biden has been on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, telling him, ‘Do not retaliate.’ The United States will not be a partner in any offensive action against Iran. Not because the United States is friendly to Iran, but the United States understands the consequences that will accrue, should such an attack take place. The United States has been deterred against further action against Iran.”

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It cost Israel $1 billion to defend against Iran’s $100 million worth of -mostly old- projectiles.

Netanyahu Called Off Retaliation Strikes After Speaking To Biden – NYT (RT)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a plan to launch immediate retaliatory strikes against Iran after speaking to US President Joe Biden by phone on Saturday night, Israeli officials have told the New York Times. According to two anonymous officials, Netanyahu’s war cabinet presented him with a list of responses to a massive drone and missile attack by Iran on Saturday evening. While some members of the cabinet reportedly pushed for an immediate military response, Netanyahu ultimately chose not to follow their advice at Biden’s request, the sources said. The full details of Biden’s conversation with Netanyahu were not revealed by the White House. According to a report on Sunday by Axios, however, Biden told Netanyahu that Israel had essentially prevailed in this clash with Iran and advised him to “take the win.”

It was also made clear during the call that any retaliatory action by Israel would not be supported by Washington, the American outlet reported. Netanyahu’s war cabinet met on Sunday afternoon to discuss Israel’s response to the Iranian attack, while Iran’s top military commander declared that the “Zionist regime” had been adequately “punished,” and that Tehran would not pursue further military action unless Israel struck again. Iran launched multiple waves of missiles and kamikaze drones at Israel on Saturday, with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stating that at least 300 projectiles were fired. While the IDF claimed to have shot down 99% of the incoming drones and missiles, video footage showed numerous impacts on Israeli soil.

Iranian officials insisted that they had “more success than expected” with the barrage, and claimed that two Israeli bases had been destroyed. The IDF acknowledged only minor damage to one military facility. The attack came two weeks after an alleged Israeli airstrike hit an Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital of Damascus. The strike killed seven officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, including two high-ranking generals. Tehran telegraphed its response, with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warning for over a week that Israel could expect a “slap in the face.”

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“Iran’s attack on Israel did not happen in a vacuum – it was a response to the shameful inaction of the UN Security Council..”

Russia Slams UNSC for Ignoring Attack on Iranian Consulate (Sp.)

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzia criticized the UN Security Council for failing to act on the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria as he urged an end to bloodshed in the Middle East during an emergency UNSC meeting on Sunday. “It is regrettable that unlike the meeting today, you did not propose to bring it to brief the Council on the 2nd of April,” he said, adding that Russia called an emergency briefing to discuss the Israeli strike against the consular premises in Damascus. Nebenzia criticized Israel for not complying with the UN Security Council resolutions, which he said was “an obvious disrespect shown to the Council, to all of you who are here in the members seats, and a complete disregard to the decisions made by the Security Council.” “This high level confrontation and bloodshed must be stopped. We think it’s urgent for the entire international community to undertake all the efforts necessary to de-escalate the situation,” Nebenzia said.

Iran’s attack on Israel did not happen in a vacuum – it was a response to the shameful inaction of the UN Security Council, the Russian ambassador stressed. “What happened on the night of April 14 did not happen ‘in a vacuum.’ Iran’s steps were a response to the shameful inaction of the United Nations Security Council [and] a response to Israel’s blatant attack on Damascus… by no means the first. Syria is constantly being bombed by Israel,” Nebenzia said. On April 3, the US and UK refused to discuss Russia’s proposed draft UN Security Council statement on the Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus. London and Washington then cited the fact that there was no unity in the meeting’s assessment of what happened. On Sunday, an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council is taking place in connection with the retaliatory strike that Iran carried out on the territory of Israel.

Meanwhile, shortly before that, Iran’s mission to the UN said that if the Security Council had condemned the Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate and brought the perpetrators to justice, the need for Iran to punish the Israeli side “could have been eliminated.” Russia calls for restraint on all sides involved in the incident with Iran’s attack on Israel, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN highlighted. Russia calls on Israel to follow the example of Iran, which has said it does not want further escalation, Nebenzia said. “We note Tehran’s signal of unwillingness to further escalate hostilities with Israel. We urge West Jerusalem to follow its example and abandon the practice of provocative forceful actions in the Middle East, fraught with extremely dangerous risks and consequences on the scale of the entire region, already destabilized as a result of the escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli confrontation,” Nebenzia emphasized.

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“..suggesting Ukraine would drive up global oil prices with attacks on Russian refineries if US aid were not forthcoming..”

Zelensky Takes Advantage of Iran-Israel Crisis to Plead for More Money (Miles)

President Volodymyr Zelensky took to the X (formerly Twitter) social media platform Sunday to remind Western lawmakers not to forget about Ukraine as the world responds to Iran’s retaliatory strike against Israel. “Ukraine condemns Iran’s attack on Israel using ‘Shahed’ drones and missiles,” the leader wrote, claiming Moscow and Tehran utilize the same kinds of armaments. “The world cannot wait for discussions to go on,” he added. “Words do not stop drones and do not intercept missiles. Only tangible assistance does. The assistance we are anticipating… It is critical that the United States Congress make the necessary decisions to strengthen America’s allies at this critical time.” Former Ukrainian minister Volodymyr Omelyan was even more forceful, slamming former US President Donald Trump whose “America First” brand of conservatism has questioned US military spending.

“I hope that Iran’s attack on Israel will send a powerful message to Republicans, namely to Mr. Trump – you cannot wait aside any more and think that those are small separate regional conflicts happening somewhere in Europe, Middle East, [or] Asia,” Omelyan said in an interview with a US-based tabloid media outlet. “China, Russia, Iran and North Korea persistently attack the West,” he said, without clarifying when they have done so. China, Iran and North Korea have historically been subject to deadly US-backed economic sanctions. The United States invaded Russia in 1918 in an attempt to thwart the country’s unfolding revolution, and invaded China to help put down the Boxer Rebellion. Zelensky has occasionally compared Ukraine’s plight to that of Israel. In 2022 the Ukrainian leader claimed he saw the country as a model for Ukraine’s future, saying Ukraine should become a “big Israel.”

The president said he was referring to Israel’s model of hardened internal security, but critics may instead draw comparisons between the two countries’ strident nationalism and treatment of minorities. The Kiev regime has launched attacks on its Russian-speaking eastern regions for more than a decade, often killing civilians. A 2014 massacre of trade unionists in Odessa drew particular condemnation. Paramilitary groups attacked a peaceful rally in the coastal city, forcing people to take refuge in the Odessa Trade Union House. The neo-Nazi gangs then set fire to the building, killing some 50 people and bludgeoning to death those who attempted to escape. Anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalists have continued to constitute an important faction of the country’s armed forces, with Kiev officially integrating the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion into its military later that year.

Israel has also received criticism for its increasingly extremist trajectory in recent years. Neo-Nazi activist Richard Spencer publicly praised the country’s so-called “Jewish Nation State” law in 2018, viewing it as a model for his desired white ethnostate. Israeli human rights group B’tselem has called Israel an “apartheid” and ethnic supremacist regime. Ukraine has become more coercive in recent months as US aid has been stalled amidst political infighting. “Give us the damn Patriots,” demanded the country’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba last month, referring to the US-developed surface-to-air missile system Ukraine sees as crucial to its fight against Russia. Kuleba appeared to economically blackmail Western countries in recent comments, suggesting Ukraine would drive up global oil prices with attacks on Russian refineries if US aid were not forthcoming.

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“Everyone survives as best they can..”

Ukrainian FM Publicly Blackmails West Over Oil Prices (RT)

Kiev would be more receptive to appeals from the US and other Western allies to quit attacking Russian oil infrastructure if those benefactors would boost their military aid, Ukraine’s top diplomat has revealed. Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba offered his suggestion for how the West can earn Ukraine’s cooperation in a local broadcast interview on Sunday. His comments came after US defense chief Lloyd Austin expressed concern earlier this month that Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian refineries and oil storage facilities could trigger a jump in international energy prices. “You need to think in your own interests,” Kuleba told Rada TV. “If your partners are saying: ‘We are giving you seven Patriot batteries, but we have a request for you, please don’t do this and that’ – then there is something to talk about.”

On the other hand, if “no batteries, no aid package” are being offered in connection with the entreaty – then there is nothing to talk about. “Everyone survives as best they can,” he added. Weapons shipments from Washington, the biggest sponsor of Kiev’s war effort against Russia, have slowed in recent months amid struggles by US President Joe Biden to secure congressional approval for more Ukraine aid. Republican lawmakers have balked at Biden’s request for more than $60 billion in additional spending after his administration burned through $113 billion in previously approved funding. Kiev’s donors had previously expressed worries that Ukrainian strikes deep into Russian territory with weapons that NATO members provided could trigger a wider conflict. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier this month that Washington does not support Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil.

Austin later suggested that Kiev could focus on military targets because hitting petroleum infrastructure could roil international markets. Kuleba said he listened to Austin, but he sees no “cause-and-effect relationship in this matter.” When a refinery in Russia “explodes,” the resulting problems are confined to the Russian energy market, he claimed, and in any case, Ukraine has to prioritize its own interests. Ukrainian drone attacks have targeted several Russian refineries since early March. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu suggested that Kiev has resorted to terrorism and long-range strikes against Russia’s civilian population in an attempt to “convince its Western sponsors of its ability to resist the Russian Army.” That’s despite the fact that Kiev has not had any actual success on the battlefield, the minister added.

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“The country faces a particular shortage of young men and women..”

Germany Escalates Donbass Conflict, Kiev Says Frontline is Deteriorating (Sp.)

Germany offered to provide Kiev with another US Patriot air defense system Saturday as Ukraine’s military chief admitted the country’s position on its eastern front is rapidly deteriorating. “The situation on the eastern front has significantly worsened in recent days,” said Ukraine armed forces commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky, confirming recent media reports. Syrsky made the assessment in a post on Telegram after a visit to a part of territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic under Ukrainian control, which is now a Russian territory. “The enemy is actively attacking our positions in the Lyman [and] Bakhmut [Artemovsk] directions with assault groups and the support of armored vehicles,” he added. “In the Pokrovsk direction, it is trying to break through our defenses using dozens of tanks.”

Syrsky attributed Ukraine’s struggles to Russia’s greater supply of weapons and military technology. Russia’s defense industry has risen to the occasion during the conflict by churning out significant supplies of ammunition. Observers have praised the quality of Russian armaments, particularly its well-respected tank building tradition. Material support for the Kiev regime has meanwhile stalled as Europe’s defense industry fails to meet demand and US backing is stymied by domestic politics. Syrsky also acknowledged a lack of effective manpower. Ukraine’s population, less than a third of Russia’s, has declined by some 30% amidst a demographic crisis after the country’s independence. The country faces a particular shortage of young men and women; the age of the average Ukrainian soldier is estimated to be 43 years old.

“The second serious problem is to improve the quality of training of military personnel, primarily infantry units, so that they can make maximum use of all the capabilities of military equipment and western weapons,” said the military chief. Reports have emerged of Ukrainian troops being provided with only a few weeks of instruction after often being forcibly conscripted. Dry weather has granted Russian tanks easy passage over Ukraine’s terrain according to Syrsky. From the air, Moscow has made extensive use of retrofitted glide bombs and drone strikes. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pleaded with Western partners to help augment the country’s air defense capacity.

Germany obliged Saturday, promising to provide Kiev with a third US Patriot surface-to-air missile system after previously having rejected the request. The pledge follows a familiar pattern of Western countries eventually conceding to Ukrainian requests for armaments after publicly agonizing over the threat of escalation. “We are supporting Ukraine as much as our own operational readiness will allow,” said German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius Saturday. Observers have questioned the consequences of Western countries depleting their weapons stocks after more than two years of arming Kiev.

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“Western imperialism and fascism have come full circle in a staggeringly short span of history..”

Germany Joins Israel In Dock For Genocide (SCF)

Eight decades ago, Nazi Germany deployed Ukrainian fascists to exterminate Jews and Slavs with a death toll of up to 30 million Soviet citizens. The contemporary Ukrainian regime glorifies these Nazi collaborators. The United States deployed the same Ukrainian fascists after the Second World War to wage covert war against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Thus, Germany and the United States along with other Western powers are continuing deep-seated historical crimes by way of their proxy war against Russia. The same imperialist rogue states are enabling Israeli aggression against Iran, Syria and Lebanon. Israel’s deadly bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus earlier this month was a particularly brazen violation of international law. The barbarity of the Israeli fascist regime is fully enabled and incentivized by its Western patrons.

The bitter irony is Washington and Berlin remonstrating with Iran to exercise “maximum restraint” while Israel openly attacks its sovereignty and assassinates its citizens. Meanwhile, the United States, Australia and Britain are cajoling Japan to join their military alliance to provoke China. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was feted in Washington this week where he signed bellicose new military measures aimed at China and Russia. Kishida linked Ukraine with Asia, claiming that if Russia were to win the war in Ukraine, then China would take over East Asia. The Japanese minion gets its half right. The regions are indeed linked, not by alleged Russian and Chinese misconduct, but by the U.S.-led imperialism that Japan is cravenly serving.

Western imperialism and fascism have come full circle in a staggeringly short span of history. Nearly 80 years after Japan was defeated in the Pacific War in which it was responsible for up to 20 million deaths in China, Tokyo is at the forefront of new plans to wage a potential nuclear war on China. The perversion of Japan joining with the United States in this venture after the latter dropped two atomic bombs on its people in 1945 is yet another sickening twist in history. The monstrous crimes of Nazi Germany and fascist Japan are today rehabilitated because the same forces serve the imperialist geopolitical interests of today. The twists and contradictions of history are, however, crystallized in one historical force. All the crimes, barbarity, bloodshed and danger of catastrophic world war are the cause of imperialist powers – chief among them the United States and its insatiable quest for hegemonic domination.

Historic failure and systemic collapse of Western capitalism is the motive engine driving the world to war again, as it was in previous periods of the modern age. Colonialist genocide, World War One, World War Two, and now the abyss of World War Three. Germany in the dock for genocide with Israel is not as incongruous as it might seem. Because imperialism and fascism are on the rampage again across the world. Both Germany and Israel are gang members in the crime syndicate, each with their specific justifying myths and alibis. Russia and China are arguably the two nations that suffered the most in history from fascism. It is entirely consistent – if not lamentable – that Russia and China today are once again confronted by the same forces. Germany is once again on the wrong side of history. And so too are the United States and all its Western vassals. Eternal shame on them.

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“The evacuation plans, codenamed Operation Meteoric..”

Royal Marines To Lead ‘Dunkirk-style’ Evacuation Of Britons In Middle East (DM)

Royal Marines are poised to lead a ‘Dunkirk-style’ evacuation of thousands of UK nationals from the Middle East after Iran launched a huge drone and missile attack against Israel last night. Commandos have already conducted reconnaissance along the Lebanese coastline ahead of a potential maritime rescue mission. The daring mission – reminiscent of the huge effort to evacuate 338,000 British troops stranded in France by the Germans during the opening salvo of the Second World War in 1940 – was exclusively revealed by the Mail on Friday. It came a day before Tehran launched a huge aerial bombardment on Saturday evening, which was in retaliation of a deadly consul blast an an Iranian embassy in Syria that killed 13 people Speaking exclusively to the Mail earlier this week, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps confirmed he ‘stands ready’ to assist any Britons trapped in the region. The Foreign Office has already advised all UK citizens to leave Lebanon.

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said there remained a ‘serious threat’ of attack while it was reported that Iran had sent a message to Washington warning them against the involvement of US troops in the region. The evacuation plans, codenamed Operation Meteoric, will be spearheaded by the UK’s ‘Green Berets’ and supported by the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. The Mail has been told a party of Marines from 30 Commando arrived in the region in recent days. Operation Meteoric has been likened to Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of allied soldiers from Dunkirk in 1940 when they were surrounded by German forces. Israel and its allies remain braced for a huge Iranian response to the attack on its Syrian consulate earlier this month, which left 13 dead, including a senior Iranian commander.

While Israel has not claimed responsibility for the blast it is widely considered to have been behind it. Iran’s response may also involve the heavily armed military group Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon. Tonight, intelligence reports suggested the retaliation could include more than 100 drones, dozens of cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. Such a scenario would likely lead to civilian ‘air bridges’ shutting down – hence the need for a maritime solution. The Mail has been told how the preparatory work behind Operation Meteoric was conducted by the Royal Marines’ Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron (SRS). They studied stretches of the Lebanese coastline and selected potential locations for such a rescue mission.

Stranded civilians would be ferried from beaches in raiding craft to Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) ships in the eastern Mediterranean. While it is understood Iran is eager to avoid direct engagement with UK forces, RAF Typhoon jets based in Cyprus could provide ‘top cover’. Earlier this week, Mr Shapps told the Mail: ‘UK nationals in the region will be concerned by what Iran is threatening to do. So we stand ready to assist them. ‘There are plans, but they cannot be discussed for security reasons.’

Read more …

 

 

 

 

McCullough childhood vaccines

 

 

Elephant mom

 

 

Baby elephant

 

 

Elephant transport

 

 

Movement Act

 

 

Kittens

 

 

 

 

Shark
https://twitter.com/i/status/1779423124829667343

 

 

10,000 ducks

 

 

Horse friend

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Sep 222023
 
 September 22, 2023  Posted by at 8:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  36 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Girl Before A Mirror 1932

 

Ukraine Has Already Lost In Its Conflict With Russia – Seymour Hersh (RT)
Ukraine Shows US Military Not Ready for Major War (Scott Ritter)
Can Ukraine Use Corruption Charges to Blackmail Biden? (Tweedie)
US May Be Supporting ‘Neo-Nazis’ by Aiding Ukraine – Congressman (Sp.)
McCarthy Says GOP Hardliners Want to ‘Burn the Whole Place Down’ (Sp.)
Zelensky Accuses The Notoriously Russophobic Polish Of Helping Moscow (Marsden)
Poland Makes U-turn On Ukraine Aid (RT)
Polish Politician Reveals Why Warsaw Changed Its Tune on Ukraine (Sp.)
NATO Expansion & Ukraine’s Destruction (Jeffrey Sachs)
Half of US’ F-35 Fleet Not Capable of Flying at Any Time – Watchdog (Sp.)
Our Self-Induced Catastrophe at the Border (Hanson)
Third IRS Official Says DOJ Blocked Weiss From Charging Hunter Biden (WE)
Russell Brand Is Unlikely To Face Actual Justice (Hryce)
Intel-linked UK Official Pushing Censorship Of Russell Brand (GZ)
The Valorization of the Tyrants (Jeffrey Tucker)

 

 

 

 

Do watch please. Ken Paxton

 

 

Tim Ballard
https://twitter.com/i/status/1704614152549916967

 

 

 

 

Shaman

 

 

 

 

“‘The war is over. Russia has won. There is no Ukrainian offensive anymore, but the White House and the American media have to keep the lie going.’”

Ukraine Has Already Lost In Its Conflict With Russia – Seymour Hersh (RT)

US intelligence analysts believe that Ukraine has given up on its counteroffensive against Russia and the only thing prolonging the conflict is the unwillingness of Washington and Kiev to acknowledge their failure, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has claimed. Writing on Substack on Thursday, the veteran reporter cited an unnamed source, who “spent the early years of his career working against Soviet aggression and spying” as rejecting the Ukrainian narrative about a slow but steady progress of the counteroffensive. “‘It’s all lies,’” the source said, according to Hersh. “‘The war is over. Russia has won. There is no Ukrainian offensive anymore, but the White House and the American media have to keep the lie going.’”

This sentiment is shared by many figures in the US intelligence community, and the CIA in particular has been skeptical of Kiev’s claims of a continued push forward, unlike the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), he explained. Trent Maul, the director of analysis for the DIA, touted Ukraine’s success to The Economist earlier this month and claimed Kiev’s forces had a “realistic” chance to break through Russian defense lines this year. The British outlet contrasted the assessment with that of an unnamed senior US intelligence official, who said the battlefield “could look broadly similar” in five years. The source cited by Hersh blasted the leadership in both Moscow and Washington for acting “stupid”during the crisis. Russian President Vladimir Putin got “provoked [into] violating the UN charter” with a poorly-prepared military campaign, he argued. US President Joe Biden retaliated with a proxy war and has had to rely on the vilification of Putin by the media “in order to justify our mistake.”

“The truth is if the Ukrainian army is ordered to continue the offensive, the army would mutiny. The soldiers aren’t willing to die any more, but this doesn’t fit the B.S. that is being authored by the Biden White House,” the source concluded. Moscow has denied the US claim that the operation against Ukraine was an act of “unprovoked aggression,” insisting that the people of Donbass had the right of self-determination under the UN Charter and acted accordingly when they broke away from Ukraine after the 2014 armed coup in Kiev. The Russian government has maintained that it acted lawfully when it recognized the independence of the Donetsk and Luganks People’s Republics in February 2022. Days later, after Kiev refused to stop attacks on Donbass and pull out its troops, Moscow launched its offensive.

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“..80-90 out of every 100 men mobilized become casualties in this conflict. Calculating that roughly 90 days transpired between the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive and Putin’s comments, this means that Ukraine was losing around 790 casualties per day.”

Ukraine Shows US Military Not Ready for Major War (Scott Ritter)

Before the Ukrainian conflict began, the US Army, drawing upon Cold War estimates, assessed in the 2019 edition of Field Manual (FM) 4-0 (Sustainment Operations) that US Army theater medical planners “may anticipate a sustained rate of roughly 3,600 casualties per day, ranging from those killed in action to those wounded in action or suffering disease or other non-battle injuries”, putting the US Army on track to lose some 50,000 casualties in two weeks of sustained combat operations against a Russian-style threat. Are these numbers realistic? Ask Ukraine. In the lead up to the current counteroffensive, Ukraine built up three brigades-worth of troops (around 20,000 soldiers) along with another nine brigades (some 37,000 troops) trained and equipped by NATO, all of which were slated to participate in the main offensive effort in and around the village of Rabotino, in southern Zaporozhye.

These forces were supplemented by an additional 40,000 territorial forces formed into eight so-called “shock brigades” intended to be deployed offensively in the vicinity of the city of Artemovsk (Bakhmut). The total number of Ukrainian troops mobilized and trained specifically for the counteroffensive was just under 100,000 men. Back in January 2023—five months before the start of the current counteroffensive, and two months before the Battle of Artemovsk (Bakhmut), US General Christopher Cavoli, the commander of US and NATO forces in Europe, told an audience at an Oslo defense forum that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine “out of proportion with all of our [NATO] recent thinking,” adding that “the magnitude of this war is incredible.” Cavoli spoke of artillery expenditure rates by the Russian Army that exceeded, on average, 20,000 rounds per day.

Violence begets violence, and with this much high explosive being sent down range, the Ukrainians were certain to be sustaining very high losses. Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking to the Eastern Economic Forum, stated that in the three months that have transpired since the Ukrainian counteroffensive was begun, Ukraine had suffered some 71,000 casualties (killed and wounded), or roughly seven out of every 10 men participating. This number is consistent with a statement made by a Ukrainian official responsible for the mobilization of troops in the Poltava Region, which indicated that 80-90 out of every 100 men mobilized become casualties in this conflict. Calculating that roughly 90 days transpired between the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive and Putin’s comments, this means that Ukraine was losing around 790 casualties per day.

The US Army currently has approximately 100,000 troops deployed to Europe, around 40,000 of which are organized into combat units expected to bear the brunt of the fighting. If these troops were subject to casualty rates approximating those sustained by Ukraine in the prosecution of its counteroffensive, the US Army would exhaust its combat power within 50 days. Of course, this calculation is misleading since it speaks of 100% casualty rates. According to US Army doctrine, if a unit is at 50 to 69 percent strength, it becomes combat ineffective, meaning it is no longer capable of accomplishing its assigned mission. The reality is that US combat forces subjected to the level of violence experienced by Ukraine at the hands of the Russians would become combat ineffective after around 2 weeks of fighting.

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“They have to worry about not only Biden, but people like Sullivan, people like Blinken, who are both demonstrably guilty of fooling around with elections..”

Can Ukraine Use Corruption Charges to Blackmail Biden? (Tweedie)

The Kiev regime could use its knowledge of the Biden family’s dealings in Ukraine to blackmail the US president into continued support for a losing conflict with Russia, says an ex-CIA commentator. Republican House of Representatives speaker Kevin McCarthy has scheduled impeachment hearings into US president Joe Biden’s alleged influence peddling through his son Hunter — revealed among the contents of his abandoned laptop computer — to begin next week. This time McCarthy snubbed the Ukrainian leader by denying his request to address Congress. But Biden still found time to invite his protégé, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to visit Washington again after his poorly-attended UN General Assembly address.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern told Sputnik that the US ever-escalating involvement in Ukraine was dangerous, as nobody knows the extent of “Biden’s personal stakes in this” not just for his son Hunter but himself and his brother James. “The evidence is accumulating. What do the Ukrainians know about all this bribery?” McGovern asked. “If Ukraine were the pristine, pure nation of the world where there was no under underhanded stuff, no corruption, that would be one thing. But they’re the picture-boy for corruption.” The former intel-cruncher noted that Biden seems caught in a death spiral of support for Kiev’s military campaigns against Russia despite the increasingly pessimistic outlook for achieving any kind of victory. “So what does Zelensky … know about Biden that has Biden in more of a pickle than most of us even realize?” McGovern asked.

“Given the way the counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces, supported by US troops and material, that’s going south, what else does Biden worry about?” But he said more important was how Russia’s political leaders viewed the lay of the land in the Washington DC swamp. “They have to worry about not only Biden, but people like Sullivan, people like Blinken, who are both demonstrably guilty of fooling around with elections,” McGovern pointed out. “Blinken has revealed that, having collected 51 former intelligence leaders to say that [Hunter] Biden’s laptop was not genuine, that it had the smell or all the earmarks of a Russian disinformation operation. Well, that’s hooey now. But it helped get Joe Biden elected.” The intelligence community insider said the level of corruption in Washington now was “as bad as I’ve ever seen it, and that goes back six decades.” “The question is, how will this impede Biden from doing anything sensible with respect to Ukraine before the election, or even after the election?” McGovern asked.

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“It is imperative that both Congress and the American taxpayers know how much of this sum has been allocated to vicious anti-Semitic neo-Nazis..”

US May Be Supporting ‘Neo-Nazis’ by Aiding Ukraine – Congressman (Sp.)

In a letter addressed to the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, US Congressman Paul Gosar voiced his misgivings about the Section 8138 of Public Law 117-328 that specifically prohibits the provision of US funds to the Azov Battalion, an infamous Ukrainian neo-Nazi unit*. In the missive dated September 20 and obtained exclusively by Sputnik, Gosar pointed out that not only does the Azov Battalion continue to exist despite having a “long history of human rights abuses,” it has been incorporated into the Ukrainian military and National Guard. “Thus, US aid of any type sent to Ukraine is being delivered, in contravention of the law, to this Nazi battalion. It is immoral and illegal for the United States to send money to a Nazi regime,” the congressman wrote.

Gosar also noted that Azov has a number of “spinoff units,” such as the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade that is a “component of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” “The US has foolishly allocated four rounds of Ukraine aid totaling at least $113 billion. As if this staggering sum is not enough, Mr. Biden recently called on more than $24 billion more to be sent to Ukraine. It is imperative that both Congress and the American taxpayers know how much of this sum has been allocated to vicious anti-Semitic neo-Nazis,” Gosar declared in the letter. While it is already bad enough that the US government willingly provided billions of dollars “to the authoritarian and corrupt Kiev regime,” the fact that Ukraine “may be able to make a fool out of the American people by abusing technicalities in Federal law to ensure neo-Nazis receive US security assistance” is worse, he added.

The US government ended up funneling billions of dollars’ worth of financial assistance and military equipment to the regime in Kiev after the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict in February 2022, prompting concerns among some members of the US Congress who were not amused by this generosity at the American taxpayers’ expense. While the US leadership and mainstream media sought to portray the Kiev regime as some kind of force for good that fights to uphold the ideals of freedom and democracy, it became increasingly clear that the Ukrainian military is rife with neo-Nazis who routinely engage in human rights abuses.

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They want no more money to Ukraine. How is that burning the place down?

McCarthy Says GOP Hardliners Want to ‘Burn the Whole Place Down’ (Sp.)

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy sent House members home on Thursday for a three-day weekend despite failing to find a resolution that would help the government avoid a shutdown at the end of the month.Five GOP hardliners demanded additional spending cuts, blocking the debate on a key military funding bill. After vowing to work through the weekend in order to find a solution to the crisis, those plans were canceled with members being told they would get “ample notice” if any votes are rescheduled. Failing to find a solution to the crisis, members are showing little faith in McCarthy’s ability to avoid a government shutdown, which could begin in just 11 days. House Republicans have voiced their frustrations regarding intraparty fighting to the media.

“We are very dysfunctional right now,” Rep. Tim Burchett, (R-TN) said, before fuming that GOP leaders “obviously can’t count” votes. He then compared McCarthy to his predecessor, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) saying: “Speaker Pelosi, love her or hate her, she put something out there and they’d rally around it.” “This is painful. It gives me a headache. This is a very difficult series of missteps by our conference,” US Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) said. “If you can’t do [the defense bill], what can you do?” US Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), a moderate Republican, seethed that the bickering within his party was a “clown show.” He added that Republicans will have to compromise if they want to get any work done in a government that is so heavily controlled by Democrats.

“For my colleagues, they have to come to a realization: If they are unable or unwilling to govern, others will. And in a divided government where you have Democrats controlling the Senate, a Democrat controlling the White House, there needs to be a realization that you’re not going to get everything you want,” he said. “And just throwing a temper tantrum and stomping your feet, frankly not only is it wrong — it’s pathetic,” he added McCarthy also slammed his conservative colleagues for wanting to “burn the place down.” “It’s frustrating in the sense that I don’t understand how anyone votes against bringing the idea up and having the debate,” he said. “This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down. That doesn’t work.”

The vote on Thursday failed 212 to 216, with five Republicans – Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Matt Rosendale of Montana and Andy Biggs and Eli Crane, both of Arizona – voting no. Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole, Oklahoma, also participated in the vote. Crane and Greene originally voted for the rule earlier this week, but changed their vote on Thursday, catching fellow Republicans off-guard. Absences also affected the Thursday voting outcome. Crane, a member of the House Freedom Caucus and a newcomer to Congress, said he is demanding lower spending levels and wants no more aid for Ukraine. “[Constituents] understand there’s no appetite to quit spending money we don’t have, and they expect me to do whatever I can to stop it and to change how we do business up here,” he said. With the House stuck in a sort of paralysis, the new plan is for Republicans to try and complete work on individual, long-term spending bills, as their short-term funding bill did not have enough GOP votes amid hardliner opposition, according to one American news source.

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“..you’re a side piece hoping for a ring and using toxic tactics to try to manipulate everyone into getting whatever you want all the time..”

Zelensky Accuses The Notoriously Russophobic Polish Of Helping Moscow (Marsden)

Ukraine and Poland’s relationship has apparently reached the throwing toys out of the pram phase. Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly this week, President Vladimir Zelensky said it was “alarming to see how some in Europe… are helping set the stage for a Moscow actor.” Who could he have been talking about? “I hope these words are not addressed to Poland,” replied a Polish government spokesman. If you have to ask yourself the question, you probably already know the answer. Yep, Zelensky is accusing Poland of cheating – with Russia. [..] It seems like just yesterday that Poland was bullying its fellow European Union member states to cough up gifts of weapons for Zelensky. Back in May, it managed to get Denmark and Finland on board with sending their German Leopard tanks to Kiev and browbeat Berlin for dragging its feet on giving permission to re-export the vehicles.

“Even if, eventually, we do not get this permission, we – within this small coalition – even if Germany is not in this coalition, we will hand over our tanks, together with the others, to Ukraine,” declared Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki at the time. Fast forward to this week. “We are no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine because we are now arming Poland with more modern weapons,” Morawiecki said. In other words, Warsaw has decided that it needs to focus on itself. Isn’t that what every exasperated partner says after spending time on a therapist’s couch and coming to their senses? Last week, Poland withdrew – along with Hungary and Slovakia – from the EU’s platform to coordinate Ukrainian grain imports. Sources claimed that the countries feared that details from any such involvement could be used against them in a lawsuit that Kiev filed earlier this week.

This was at the World Trade Organization in response to them maintaining their bans on Ukrainian grain imports despite Brussels’ decision to lift them on September 15. Thus, Poland has gone from loudly proclaiming its love for Kiev to suddenly acting like a party to a potentially messy divorce, now taking self-preservation measures against a toxic partner. One who keeps making demands even when you say “no.” And that’s exactly what these countries did by insisting that Ukraine’s grain be banned lest it compete with their own farmers’ produce, driving its value down – and not even a month before the next Polish parliamentary election on October 15. Instead of trying to see the situation from these countries’ perspectives, Kiev blew a gasket.

“The systemic approach of Budapest and Warsaw of ignoring the position of the EU institutions in trade policy, I think that will be a problem for the EU in general because there is no unity there,” said Taras Kachka, a trade representative. Kiev is acting like it can’t understand why Brussels is backing the three while it keeps stringing Ukraine along with promises of commitment.It’s because they’re in a binding relationship with the EU. By contrast, you’re a side piece hoping for a ring and using toxic tactics to try to manipulate everyone into getting whatever you want all the time. The gloves have really come off now, though, with Ukraine daring to suggest that the EU isn’t united. That threatens to ruin the main theme of unelected European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s virtue signaling.

Kiev is now doubling down on the psycho-ex vibe by threatening that unless the unilateral bans on grain are lifted, it will go after Polish apples and onions and Hungarian cars with retaliatory restrictions. (Why do bad breakups always have to target innocent cars – whether it’s keying/scratching, smashing, or blocking?) Poland has since pushed back in a tit-for-tat. “I warn the Ukrainian authorities because if they escalate this conflict in this way, we will add more products to the ban on import into the territory of the Republic of Poland,” Prime Minister Morawiecki said on Wednesday.

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That was quick.

Poland Makes U-turn On Ukraine Aid (RT)

The Polish government has attempted to walk back Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s threat to halt weapon shipments to Ukraine. Government spokesman Piotr Muller has stressed that Poland will continue to send military supplies to Ukraine under its existing agreements. “Poland is only carrying out previously agreed supplies of ammunition and armaments, including those resulting from the contracts signed with Ukraine,” the spokesman said, noting that Poland has “consistently helped” Kiev in the conflict. His statement comes after Morawiecki declared on Thursday that Warsaw will no longer provide arms to the Ukrainian military and will instead focus on arming its own forces with modern weapons. “Ukrainian authorities do not understand the degree to which Poland’s farming industry has been destabilized” by imports, the prime minister said.

One Polish government official, however, told Bloomberg on the condition of anonymity that the prime minister’s words had been wrongly interpreted. Another official claimed that while Poland has no more weaponry left that can be donated, it will continue to make ammunition shipments to Ukraine. Kiev’s public falling out with one of its staunchest supporters throughout the Russian-Ukraine conflict comes amid an escalating diplomatic row over Ukrainian grain imports to Europe. Poland, along with Hungary and Slovakia, had previously decided to go against the EU’s decision to lift the embargo on Ukrainian grain. Warsaw explained the unilateral move by stating it protecting its farmers and preventing cheap Ukrainian agricultural products from flooding the market and disrupting the agricultural industry.

Kiev responded to the move by condemning it as “illegal” and announcing that it would file a dispute with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the three Eastern European countries. It also threatened to ban the import of Polish fruits and vegetables. The EU, meanwhile, has demanded that Warsaw, Budapest, and Bratislava reverse their bans because EU members are not allowed to take unilateral measures on trade. However, according to a report by the Financial Times, Brussels is now considering whether to protect the three countries against Kiev’s WTO filing. It is allegedly working to “coordinate” its legal rebuttals to the claim.

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“..Warsaw’s rhetoric is all about the upcoming parliamentary elections, “which the ruling Law and Justice party would lose by continuing to uncritically support Kiev.”

Polish Politician Reveals Why Warsaw Changed Its Tune on Ukraine (Sp.)

Relations between Warsaw and Kiev have soured recently after Polish authorities, along with their Hungarian and Slovakian counterparts, moved to restrict imports of cheap Ukrainian grain in a bid to protect local farmers. Kiev promptly retaliated by filing a complaint with the World Trade Organization against all three countries and even threatened to block certain agricultural imports from Poland and Hungary if the ban on Ukrainian grain was not lifted. Many prominent Polish politicians appeared unamused by this turn of events, with Poland’s Minister of Defense Marius Blaszczak insisting that Warsaw essentially protects Polish farmers from the schemes of “Ukrainian oligarchs” who want to sell Ukrainian grain in Poland.

Polish politician and independent commentator Konrad Rekas, however, argued that Warsaw’s rhetoric is all about the upcoming parliamentary elections, “which the ruling Law and Justice party would lose by continuing to uncritically support Kiev.” “Of course, Ukraine does not intend to make the internal games easier for its Polish allies, fully understanding that it will receive everything it demands from the next Polish government, regardless of which party forms the government,” Rekas told Sputnik. He claimed that the spat between Ukraine and Poland is not really related to the matter of Ukrainian grain exports or Warsaw’s alleged intent to occupy certain Ukrainian territories and that it is unlikely to affect the course of the Ukrainian conflict.

“Poland will still be a hub for the Western military aid for the Kiev regime. Poles will continue to pay millions for the Ukrainian resettlement to Poland,” Rekas surmised. Since the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict in February 2022, Poland supplied large quantities of military hardware to the regime in Kiev, including battle tanks and warplanes, and helped accommodate tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees on Polish soil. This week, however, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced that his country now focuses on arming itself with modern weapons and no longer transfers armaments to Kiev, while Polish government Press Secretary Piotr Muller said that Warsaw apparently has not got plans to continue supporting Ukrainian refugees in Poland next year.

These statements come ahead of the parliamentary election in Poland slated to take place on October 15, and it remains unclear whether Polish politicians are going to fulfill their promises or if it is all merely an attempt to sway voters. Meanwhile, Slovakia, another prominent backer of the Kiev regime, may change its stance on the Ukrainian conflict after the September 30 election in the country. Former Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, whose social-democratic Smer (Direction) party dominates the recent polls, has already stated that Slovakia will no longer “send any arms or ammunition to Ukraine” should his party form part of a new government.

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“..the entire Russian political class, not just Putin, was dead-set against NATO enlargement..”

NATO Expansion & Ukraine’s Destruction (Jeffrey Sachs)

According to the U.S. government and the ever-obsequious New York Times, the Ukraine war was “unprovoked,” the Times’ favorite adjective to describe the war. Putin, allegedly mistaking himself for Peter the Great, invaded Ukraine to recreate the Russian Empire. Yet last week, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg committed a Washington gaffe, meaning that he accidentally blurted out the truth. In testimony to the European Union Parliament, Stoltenberg made clear that it was America’s relentless push to enlarge NATO to Ukraine that was the real cause of the war and why it continues today. Here are Stoltenberg’s revealing words:

“The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition to not invade Ukraine. Of course, we didn’t sign that. The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second-class membership. We rejected that. So, he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite.”

To repeat, he [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. When Prof. John Mearsheimer, I, and others have said the same, we’ve been attacked as Putin apologists. The same critics also choose to hide or flatly ignore the dire warnings against NATO enlargement to Ukraine, long articulated by many of America’s leading diplomats, including the great scholar-statesman George Kennan, and the former U.S. ambassadors to Russia Jack Matlock and William Burns. Burns, now C.I.A. director, was U.S. ambassador to Russia in 2008, and author of a memo entitled “Nyet means Nyet.” In that memo, Burns explained to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the entire Russian political class, not just Putin, was dead-set against NATO enlargement. We know about the memo only because it was leaked. Otherwise, we’d be in the dark about it.

Why does Russia oppose NATO enlargement? For the simple reason that Russia does not accept the U.S. military on its 2,300 km border with Ukraine in the Black Sea region. Russia does not appreciate the U.S. placement of Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania after the U.S. unilaterally abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Russia also does not welcome the fact that the U.S. engaged in no fewer than 70 regime change operations during the Cold War (1947-1989), and countless more since, including in Serbia, Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, and Ukraine. Nor does Russia like the fact that many leading U.S. politicians actively advocate the destruction of Russia under the banner of “Decolonizing Russia.” That would be like Russia calling for the removal of Texas, California, Hawaii, the conquered Indian lands, and much else, from the United States.

Even Zelensky’s team knew that the quest for NATO enlargement meant imminent war with Russia. Oleksiy Arestovych, former adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine under Zelensky, declared that “with a 99.9 percent probability, our price for joining NATO is a big war with Russia.”

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$1.7 trillion for jets that don’t fly.

Half of US’ F-35 Fleet Not Capable of Flying at Any Time – Watchdog (Sp.)

Almost half the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that are supposed to be operational are not capable of flying and it will cost $1.3 trillion to keep them operational, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a new report. “The F-35 fleet mission capable rate – the percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions – was about 55% in March 2023, far below program goals,” the report said on Thursday. The GAO called this level of operational readiness “unacceptably low.” “The program was behind schedule in establishing depot maintenance activities to conduct repairs. As a result, component repair times remained slow with over 10,000 waiting to be repaired – above desired levels,” the report said.

Organizational-level maintenance has also been affected by a lack of technical data and training, the report added. It will cost $1.3 trillion to keep the full F-35 fleet operational and flying even if or when all the repair and maintenance bottlenecks, as well as ongoing development problems with the aircraft’s cannon, ejector seat, software and hardware are fixed, the report said. However, despite the downfalls associated with the F-35 program, the report also determined that the Biden administration and the Department of Defense remain committed to a $1.7 trillion expenditure on buying a total of 2,500 F-35s for the US armed forces.

“In the coming decades, the Department of Defense plans to spend an estimated $1.7 trillion on nearly 2,500 F-35s,” the report stated, acknowledging that the majority of the funds will go to operating, maintaining, and repairing the aircraft. The F-35 aircraft now represents a growing portion of the Defense Department’s tactical aviation fleet with about 450 of the aircraft fielded, the GAO said. From the start of the F-35 program, officials have dealt with a variety of major setbacks with the fleet, ranging from costly fixes to sensitivities with overheating and lightning strikes. More recently, the program made global headline news after a US Marine Corps F-35B crashed in South Carolina and sent authorities on a hunt after being unable to track the fighter once its pilot safely ejected.

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“The ethnic chauvinists and Democratic Party elites needed new constituents, given their increasingly unpopular agendas.”

Our Self-Induced Catastrophe at the Border (Hanson)

Since early 2021 we have witnessed somewhere between 7 and 8 million illegal entries across the now nonexistent U.S. southern border. The more the border vanished, the more federal immigration law was rendered inert, and the more Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas spun fantasies that the “border is secure.” He is now written off as a veritable “Baghdad Bob” propagandist. But how and why did the Biden administration destroy immigration law as we knew it? The Trump administration’s initial efforts to close the border had been continually obstructed in the Congress, sabotaged by the administrative state, and stymied in the courts. Nonetheless, it had finally secured the border by early 2020. Yet almost all its successful initiatives were immediately overturned in 2021.

The wall was abruptly stopped, its projected trajectory cancelled. The Obama-era disastrous “catch-and release” policy of immigration non-enforcement was resurrected. Prior successful pressure on Mexico’s President Andrés Obrador to stop the deliberate export of his own citizens northward ceased. Federal border patrol officers were forced to stand down. New federal subsidies were granted to entice and then support illegal arrivals. No one in the Democratic Party objected to the destruction of the border or the subversion of immigration law. However, things changed somewhat once swamped southern border states began to bus or fly a few thousand of their illegal immigrants northward to sanctuary city jurisdictions—especially to New York, Chicago, and even Martha’s Vineyard.

The sanctuary-city “humanists” there who had greenlighted illegal immigration into the southern states suddenly shrieked. They were irate after experiencing the concrete consequences of their own prior abstract border agendas. After all, their nihilism was always supposed to fall upon distant and ridiculed others. New York mayor Eric Adams went from celebrating a few dozen illegal immigrants bused into Manhattan, to blasting his own party by allowing tens of thousands to swamp his now bankrupt city. But why did the Biden administration deliberately unleash the largest influx across the southern border in U.S. history? The ethnic chauvinists and Democratic Party elites needed new constituents, given their increasingly unpopular agendas.

They feared that the more legal Latino immigrants assimilated and integrated into American society, the less happy they became with leftwing radical abortion, racial, transgender, crime, and green fixations. Democratic grandees had always bragged that illegal immigration would create what they called “The New Democratic Majority” in “Demography is Destiny” fashion. Now they slander critics as “racists” who object to leftwing efforts to use illegal immigration to turn southwestern red states blue. Mexico now cannot survive as a modern state without some $60 billion in annual remittances sent by its expatriates in America. But many illegal immigrants rely on American state and federal entitlements to free up cash to send home.

Mexico also encourages its own abject poor and often indigenous people from southern Mexico to head north as a safety-valve of sorts. The government sees these mass exoduses northward as preferable to the oppressed marching on Mexico City to address grievances of poverty and racism. The criminal cartels now de facto run Mexico. An open border allows them to ship fentanyl northward, earn billions in profits—and kill nearly 100,000 Americans a year. Illegal immigrants pay cartels additional billions to facilitate their border crossings.

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Weiss is two-faced.

Third IRS Official Says DOJ Blocked Weiss From Charging Hunter Biden (WE)

A third IRS official confirmed that Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss faced roadblocks when attempting to bring charges against Hunter Biden, contradicting denials issued Wednesday by Attorney General Merrick Garland. IRS Director of Field Operations Michael Batdorf told the House Ways and Means Committee in a closed-door interview on Sept. 12 that he felt “frustrated” by the refusal of the Justice Department to approve tax charges that IRS agents viewed as well-supported by evidence, according to a transcript of the interview obtained by the Washington Examiner. He also said the IRS removed agent Gary Shapley, a whistleblower, from the Hunter Biden case at the direction of Weiss despite having done nothing wrong.

Batdorf’s testimony was the latest piece of evidence to suggest Weiss did not enjoy the unfettered authority to pursue Hunter Biden that Garland and others claimed he had. Still, Batdorf, who was above Shapley in the IRS chain of command, stopped short of attributing the DOJ’s actions to bias in favor of President Joe Biden. In addition to the two Joe Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys who refused to allow Weiss to bring charges against Hunter Biden in their districts, Batdorf said the DOJ Tax Division opposed bringing charges. Batdorf said DOJ Tax argued against charges for Hunter Biden during a June 2022 meeting with Weiss and IRS officials, who were in favor of advancing the case. “DOJ Tax would have to authorize charges prior to David Weiss recommending an indictment or prosecution,” Batdorf said during his interview.

“So, I mean, my understanding is that, I mean, he can’t make that decision without DOJ Tax authorization,” Batdorf said. The IRS supervisor confirmed that Hunter Biden’s defense team was given an unusual number of chances, possibly as many as four, to meet with DOJ Tax investigators and argue why its client should not face charges. Tensions between DOJ Tax and the IRS investigators over the strength of the case began after DOJ Tax officials started meeting with Hunter Biden’s defense lawyers, Batdorf said. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) asked Garland on Wednesday about whether DOJ Tax had the ability to stop a U.S. attorney from proceeding on a tax case. “Most of the time, but not when the attorney general has granted authority to a U.S. attorney to do what he thinks is best,” Garland said at the House Judiciary Committee hearing.

But Weiss did not appear to have that authority at the time. Batdorf said he sensed frustration on the team that Weiss had found roadblocks on multiple paths to prosecuting Hunter Biden. “I was frustrated,” he said. “[Weiss] was probably a little frustrated … because he now had to make some decisions on what he was going to do.” Then, in the fall of last year, the investigation seemed to stall. Batdorf said the case was effectively dormant from October 2022 until May this year. During the intervening months, investigators had little else to do except wait for Weiss to make a decision about whether to move the case forward or end it. Weiss did not decide to proceed until Shapley had already begun the process of testifying to Congress about the investigation. “David Weiss made his decision to go forward in May. I’m not sure what drove that decision,” Batdorf said.

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The MeToo manual.

Russell Brand Is Unlikely To Face Actual Justice (Hryce)

Last week, the controversial comedian and movie star Russell Brand became the latest high-profile target of the #MeToo movement. This should not come as a complete surprise, given his celebrity status and sordid history of self-confessed promiscuity. Brand has been a potential target in waiting for some years – and it was probably just a matter of time before the movement zeroed in on him. The attack on Brand followed the well-rehearsed, standard #MeToo modus operandi. A number of anonymous women, none of whom could ever hope to attain the celebrity status of their male target, have accused Brand of various kinds of sexual misconduct – including, most seriously, rape. These alleged acts occurred some years ago, and none were reported to the police at the time they supposedly occurred.

Nor have these acts been reported to the police even now. Making a formal complaint to the police would, of course, involve the police independently investigating the allegations – at least to the extent that the British police are capable of impartially investigating allegations of this kind. The ideological predisposition of the police in respect of such matters can perhaps be gauged from the statement issued by them after the media storm against Brand broke last week – the police immediately urged any victims of Brand’s sexual indiscretions to contact them and make complaints against him. It is unlikely that the women who have targeted Brand will make formal complaints to the police at this stage – that usually occurs long after the media campaign against the target has destroyed his reputation and career, and seriously prejudiced the likelihood of a fair trial occurring.

#MeToo complainants tend to avoid the courts if they can – because the law is based upon notions such as the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial. The law also requires complainants to justify their allegations by means of credible evidence; and subjects them to cross-examination. Such notions and practices are completely foreign to the persecutory #MeToo modus operandi. More to the point, they afford the accused a degree of protection that, in some cases, may even enable them to escape the destructive rage of the movement altogether. Complainants prefer trial by an ideologically compliant media, as Brand is now discovering to his cost.

[..] Brand has already been found guilty as charged by the media. In the space of a few days, his reputation has been irretrievably damaged and his career is being progressively destroyed. Brand’s current stand-up comedy tour in Britain has been cancelled. He has been condemned by media organisations that once vied to employ him, and celebrities who once willingly basked in his reflected glory. Charities that he has supported have cast him aside, and ex-wives and former girlfriends have vengefully denounced him.

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“Rumble “stands for very different values,” and “emphatically reject[s] the UK parliament’s demands.”

Intel-linked UK Official Pushing Censorship Of Russell Brand (GZ)

Allegations of sexual impropriety and abuse by comedian and podcaster Russell Brand by the British media prompted YouTube to demonetize the star’s popular channel on September 20. The Grayzone can now reveal that YouTube’s financial censorship of Brand is the result of an effort waged by a former British government minister who was responsible for London’s crackdown on dissent during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her husband has also participated in that campaign of state repression as deputy commander of 77th Brigade, the British Army’s psychological warfare division. YouTube justified its demonetization of Brand on the grounds that he violated its “creator responsibility policy.” This marks the first time a content creator has been financially punished by the company for reasons other than the videos published on the site.

A spokesperson has claimed, “if a creator’s off-platform behaviour harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action.” The allegations against Brand date from betwee 2006 and ’13, and have yet to be proven in court. There is no indication the charges are being investigated by law enforcement in Britain or the US, where the offenses allegedly occurred. Brand has vehemently denied accusations of abuse and rape. Brand’s videos analyzing political developments and topics such as the Covid-19 pandemic, corporate media propaganda and the Ukraine proxy war have earned him an audience of millions, making him one of the world’s most influential alternative media personalities. For this, he appears to have been marked as a threat to the narratives spun out by Washington and London.

New developments suggest YouTube’s censorship of Brand was driven by direct British government decree. On September 19, the social media companies TikTok and Rumble received a pair of almost identical letters dispatched from Caroline Dinenage, the head of the UK parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Dinenage informed the companies she was “concerned that [Brand] may be able to profit from his content” published on both platforms. She then suggested they impose financial penalties: “We would be grateful if you could confirm whether Mr Brand is able to monetise his […] posts, including his videos relating to the serious accusations against him, and what the platform is doing to ensure that creators are not able to use the platform to undermine the welfare of victims of inappropriate and potentially illegal behaviour.”

The Committee’s letter to Rumble contained a direct demand for demonetization: “we would like to know whether Rumble intends to join YouTube in suspending Mr Brand’s ability to earn money on the platform.” In a withering response to Dinenage’s letter, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski asserted that while noting his company “obviously deplores sexual assault, rape, and all serious crimes, and believes that both alleged victims and the accused are entitled to a full and serious investigation.” Pavlovski went on to slam YouTube’s demonetization of Brand, declaring that Rumble “stands for very different values,” and “emphatically reject[s] the UK parliament’s demands.”

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“Everything she did during the COVID era flies in the face of values that the West has held for almost a thousand years since the Magna Carta.”

The Valorization of the Tyrants (Jeffrey Tucker)

This is surely one of the strangest twists in official narratives in perhaps hundreds of years. The bad guys have been christened as the good guys, and the good guys have been purged, deplatformed, canceled, and demonized. It’s a turn of events none of us could have imagined back in 2020. It cries out for an explanation. I truly fear knowing the answer as to why. Just consider the fate of former New Zealand Prime Jacinda Ardern. She locked down her country, trampling all rights of the people under the guise of controlling the spread of a virus. You could not go to church. You could not be unmasked. You could not leave the country and return. No one could travel there without official permission. As bad as the United States and Europe were during this period, New Zealand was worse, and it was backed up by speech controls.

Anyone protesting the policies was risking everything. And when the vaccine came along, Ardern outright said it: the people who get it will have rights but those who do not will not. It was a new biomedical caste system. Eventually, the country did open. Now speakers decrying the whole period are attracting audiences in the thousands, and Ardern is widely unpopular. Her successor who continues to defend all this despotism is under a cloud and also deeply unpopular. The tables have completely turned. Of course the virus came anyway, as it must, so the junta that did this has turned their attention to climate change, the defense of censorship, and the escalation of the Russia/Ukraine war. Five years ago, anyone would have supposed that a leader that acted this way would live in shame. I certainly assumed so.

My supposition is that Ardern had made horrific misjudgments and would be widely decried as a confused tyrant. She would live out her days in disrepute, surely. The opposite has happened. She is now the subject of celebratory biographies. She is lauded by mainstream media. She addressed the United Nations last year in a speech that was an open call for a new global censorship regime. True, the fact-checkers disagree with this interpretation. Instead she was merely calling out “the weaponization of free speech societies and platforms by misinformation agents.” Oh. In any case, in my imagination, I could not have dreamed up a specimen of error and tyranny more deserving of devaluing than Jacinda Ardern. Everything she did during the COVID era flies in the face of values that the West has held for almost a thousand years since the Magna Carta.

But I was wrong. Completely. I underestimated just how broken the world is. Instead of being disgraced, she is enjoying not one but two fellowships at Harvard University where she enjoys massive prestige and adoration by faculty, staff, and students. To me, this seems like the Twilight Zone—an ending to the story that I could not have imagined. Are we supposed to be against segregation, house arrest, forced medical treatments, locking people in nations, and censorship? I thought at least we would agree on that much. Apparently not. Apparently, it is the opposite. Everything that I believed was deprecated is exalted and all the public virtues I believed we extolled are now denounced.

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F-35
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Jul 102015
 
 July 10, 2015  Posted by at 11:04 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  12 Responses »


Wynand Stanley Ice-packed Buick motor stunt, San Francisco 1922

Stock Slide Ruins China’s Illusion of Control (Bloomberg)
Greece Seeks €53.5 Billion Bailout in Effort to Keep Euro (Bloomberg)
France Intercedes on Greece’s Behalf to Try to Hold Eurozone Together (WSJ)
The Big Achievement Of Tsipras’s Proposal Is To Sow Division (Münchau)
Galbraith: Greek Revolt Against Bad Economics Threatens EU Elites (Parramore)
The US Must Save Greece (Joe Stiglitz)
Greece Presents €2 Billion Russian Gas Deal (FT)
Germany Concedes Greece Needs Debt Relief, Greek Plan Awaited (Reuters)
Germany Failed To Learn From Its Own History-And Greece Pays The Price (WaPo)
Weidmann Warns Greek Banks Concerns Rising By Day (FT)
Greek Government Insider On 5 Months Of ‘Humiliation’ And ‘Blackmail’ (MP)
Swiss Poised To Support Greek Tax Amnesty (SI)
The Lesson for the World Coming from Greece (Martin Armstrong)
Varoufakis: Schäuble Wants Grexit, I Prefer Be an MP Known as Yanis (GF)
Max Keiser and Yanis Varoufakis Retrospective (2012 footage)
Darwin’s Casino (John Michael Greer)
Pope Calls For New Economic Order, Criticizes Capitalism (Reuters)

And that is nigh impossible to regain.

Stock Slide Ruins China’s Illusion of Control (Bloomberg)

The other, grander gamble that Xi has taken is to keep the Chinese economy growing. Of course, the Communist Party since Deng Xiaoping has staked its legitimacy on economic growth, so far to good effect. But Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao governed through a broad-based consensus of senior party leaders, which meant that the risks of legitimacy and delegitimacy were spread across the group and the institution they represented. Xi, in contrast, has taken more power – and therefore the risks of economic growth – onto his shoulders. There are many tools central government can use to keep an economy growing, and China under Xi will use them all. State-owned enterprises may be less efficient in the long run than truly private companies, but they have the enormous political benefit of responding to centralized state directives.

With good economists advising him, Xi stands a reasonable chance of transitioning China into a more consumer-driven economy, thereby assuring a source of modest continued growth even as the export-driven economy slows down. But that task, too, depends on the individual purchasing decisions of ordinary Chinese – that is, success of China’s economy, and therefore of Xi’s presidency, ultimately depends on the domestic consumer market. This brings us back to the stock market. Sure, Xi has to worry that the correction will spook emerging consumers, encouraging them to sit on their cash rather than spending it. But the much bigger political problem is that ordinary Chinese, watching the market fall, will experience the certain knowledge that Xi can’t really do anything about it.

Short-term stopgaps like closing markets during sell-offs or ordering state-owned enterprises not to sell their shares won’t address market fundamentals – because they can’t. In confirmed capitalist societies, we long ago learned that the government can’t stop the market from going where it believes it must. The reason, of course, is that the market isn’t a single entity that can be forced to take collective action. It’s an aggregation of individual decision-makers, all of whom share a competitive interest in achieving gain and limiting loss. For that reason, governments in experienced capitalist countries know that the only meaningful, long-term way to respond to market declines is by trying to create economic conditions that will restore faith in the markets.

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A whole long weekend of this. And then votes on Mon-Tue in national parliaments.

Greece Seeks €53.5 Billion Bailout in Effort to Keep Euro (Bloomberg)

The government of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras sought a three-year bailout loan of at least €53.5 billion ($59.2 billion), in a last-ditch effort to keep the country in the euro. In exchange, it offered a package of reforms and spending cuts, including pension savings and tax increases, similar to the one presented by creditors last month. The proposal was submitted to European institutions late Thursday and will be presented to the Greek Parliament Friday. It is set to be discussed at a summit of European Union leaders Sunday to determine whether Greece gets a new bailout, or be forced to leave the single currency. Greece offered measures that almost mirrored a proposal from creditors on June 26, which was rejected by voters in a July 5 referendum.

In return, it asked for its long-term debt to be made more manageable to allow it to rebound from a crisis that has erased a quarter of its economy. It is unclear if the proposal is enough to clinch a deal with creditors amid signs of economic deterioration since banks were closed and capital controls imposed 12 days ago. “The Greeks appear to have made significant concessions, apparently accepting much of the most recent creditor proposal,” Chris Scicluna, head of economic research at Daiwa Capital Markets in London, wrote in a note. “It remains to be seen whether creditors will want even more austerity.” The Greek government said it would use the three-year loan from the European Stability Mechanism to cover debt repayments between 2015 and 2018, mostly to the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.

It will then be left with debt owed only to European Union institutions. Greece’s proposal includes creditors’ longstanding demands for sales tax increases and cuts in public spending on pensions. Greece also proposes the restructuring of its debt and a package of growth measures of €35 billion. Pressure has been mounting on Greece’s creditors to make the country’s debt more manageable. “A realistic proposal from Greece will have to be matched by an equally realistic proposal on debt sustainability from the creditors,” European Union President Donald Tusk told reporters in Luxembourg Thursday. “Only then will we have a win-win situation.”

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“French leaders have waxed poetic in recent days about the special place Greece holds. Greek independence was celebrated by French writers and artists from Victor Hugo and to Eugene Delacroix..”

France Intercedes on Greece’s Behalf to Try to Hold Eurozone Together (WSJ)

The race to come up with a last-minute proposal to keep Greece in the eurozone began with a Sunday night phone call from Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to French President Francois Hollande, moments after Greece’s referendum dealt a near-fatal blow to the talks. If Greece wanted to remain in the eurozone, Athens must make ambitious proposals to its creditors quickly, Mr. Hollande told him, adding: “Help me help you.” That advice was part of an urgent French campaign to salvage months of negotiations from the wreckage of the Greek referendum. After long staying out of the fray, Mr. Hollande was scrambling to keep the discussions alive. His strategy: to press Mr. Tsipras for stronger economic overhauls while persuading Angela Merkel to give Greece more time and, ultimately, hope for debt relief.

The stance reflects a particularly French vision of the eurozone as a grand political project, with strategic benefits for Europe worth defending even at high cost. A Greek exit from the eurozone would set a dangerous precedent, French officials say, turning the currency bloc into little more than an arrangement of fixed currency exchange rates that governments could discard. French leaders have waxed poetic in recent days about the special place Greece holds. Greek independence was celebrated by French writers and artists from Victor Hugo and to Eugene Delacroix, Prime Minister Manuel Valls told lawmakers Wednesday in explaining why France refuses to accept a Greek exit from the euro. “Greece is a passion for France and Europe,” Mr. Valls said.

“The goddess that gave its name to our continent is at the heart of our mythology.” Domestic politics is also at work. Mr. Hollande, a Socialist, faces a rebellion from members of his parliamentary majority who accuse him of abandoning his 2012 election pledge to push for pro-growth policies in Europe. Standing up to Berlin on behalf of Greece is a chance to brandish his leftist credentials for party hard-liners, analysts say. It is unclear whether France’s triage will lead to a deal by Sunday, when European Union leaders are due to decide Greece’s fate. But France’s intervention has helped keep the talks on life support.

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“.. there is now the acute problem of an insolvent banking system..” A problem all of the Troika’s own design.

The Big Achievement Of Tsipras’s Proposal Is To Sow Division (Münchau)

I do not have the foggiest whether these latest Greek proposals will be enough to secure a deal. There are still very big obstacles to overcome. But Alexis Tsipras has achieved something that has eluded him in the past five months: he has managed to split the creditors. The IMF insists on debt relief. The French helped the Greek prime minister draft the proposal and were the first to support it openly. President François Hollande is siding with Mr Tsipras. And that changes the stakes for Angela Merkel. If the German chancellor says no now, she will stand accused of taking reckless risks with the eurozone and the Franco-German alliance. If she says yes, her own party might divide similarly to the way the British Conservatives divided over Europe. I have always predicted that the moment of truth for the eurozone will come eventually. It will come this weekend.

The financial markets seemed to have made up their mind that a deal will happen. But beware the many landmines on the path to a deal. Of those, only the first has been sidestepped with Mr Tsipras’ offer. What he is now proposing is, economically, not fundamentally different from what he, and the Greek electorate, rejected in Sunday’s referendum — but it works politically for him. The phase-in period of some of the harder measures is longer. And if there is a deal, there will have to be an explicit reference to debt relief this time. The IMF insists on it. And even Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, says so. This is an important development, but it is not clear that all creditors will, or can, agree.

By tomorrow, the technical people and the finance ministers will need to discuss whether the Greek numbers add up. The answer is almost certainly no, not least because of the rapid deterioration of the country’s economy. The imposition of capital controls and bank withdrawal limits brought most economic activity to a standstill. Any macroeconomic adjustment programme will have to start with a realisation that the situation is worse today than two weeks ago. The Greek list takes account of this in terms of slower adjustment periods. This is economically sensible. But Ms Merkel has already said she wanted this problem taken care of through additional austerity. For a programme to be agreed, one side will have to back down here.

On top of this, there is now the acute problem of an insolvent banking system — one that is totally reliant on a special lifeline by ECB called emergency liquidity assistance. The ECB will find it hard to increase ELA. So apart from agreeing on a macroeconomic stabilisation programme, European leaders will this weekend need to answer the more immediate question of what to do with the Greek banks. This is possibly the single most complicated question because there are no easy and fast answers. What may have to happen is that the number of banks will have to shrink to three or two, and that depositors may have to be “bailed in”. I cannot see that the creditors would agree to a further bank restructuring programme, in addition to the €53.5bn in new loans currently under discussion.

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The superego paradox again.

Galbraith: Greek Revolt Against Bad Economics Threatens EU Elites (Parramore)

Lynn Parramore: What’s your view of the attitudes of the creditor powers?
Jamie Galbraith: What happened on the 26th of June was that Alexis (Tsipras) came to realize, at long last, that no matter how many concessions he made he wasn’t going to get the first one from the creditors. That’s something Wolfgang Schäuble had made clear to Yanis (Varoufakis) months before. But it was hard to persuade the Greek government of this because its members naturally expected, as you would when you’re in a negotiation, that if you make a concession the other side will make a concession. That isn’t the way this one worked. The Greeks kept making concessions. They’d present a program and the other side would say —as you can read in the press — oh, no, that’s not good enough. Do another one. Then they’d complain that the Greeks were not being serious. What the creditors meant by that was this: when you come around and agree to what we tell you, then you’re serious. Otherwise not. This is the way bad professors treat extremely recalcitrant students. You come in with a paper draft and they say, no, that’s not good enough. Do another one.

LP: Have the individual creditors differed on how to treat Greece?
JG: There are some divisions amongst the creditors that are well known. But they’re all variations on the theme of insular, sheltered, cloistered people who do not understand what is happening in Greece and do not know the economics. So, for example, the European Commission tends to be a little bit nicer, the IMF tends to be better on debt restructuring but worse on the structural issues, and the ECB was infuriated by the fact that its technocrats couldn’t walk into any ministry in Athens and make demands and be paid attention to. So there were different aspects of this that seemed to trouble different creditors, but it all amounted to the fact that between them there was no basis for arriving at anything other than the original Memorandum of Understanding (bailout program).

LP: What exactly triggered the breakdown that led to the referendum?
JG: What happened was that the IMF took the staff level agreement draft that the Greeks had presented, and marked it up in red ink and presented it back to the Greeks as an ultimatum— this is what we will accept. Or rather (EC president) Juncker presented it back to the Greeks as an ultimatum. And Yanis was told, take it or leave it. So they basically had no choice but to walk away from it, to leave it.

LP: How do you think the referendum has changed the situation? Has it given the Greeks leverage or not?
JG: That’s a difficult question. The recent Ambrose Evans Pritchard piece is very much on the mark. The Greek government, and particularly the circle around Alexis, were worn down by this process. They saw that the other side does, in fact, have the power to destroy the Greek economy and the Greek society — which it is doing — in a very brutal, very sadistic way, because the burden falls particularly heavily on pensions. They were in some respects expecting that the yes would prevail, and even to some degree thinking that that was the best way to get out of this. The voters would speak and they would acquiesce. They would leave office and there would be a general election. But civil society took this over in the most dramatic and heroic fashion. It was an incredible thing to see. The Greeks, amazingly, voted 61% no. That, momentarily, gave a jolt of adrenaline to everybody in the government. But the next morning, they were back where they were before. And that’s why, of course, Yanis left at that point.

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What’s the use with Spain and Italy waiting in the wings?

The US Must Save Greece (Joe Stiglitz)

As the Greek saga continues, many have marveled at Germany’s chutzpah. It received, in real terms, one of the largest bailout and debt reduction in history and unconditional aid from the U.S. in the Marshall Plan. And yet it refuses even to discuss debt relief. Many, too, have marveled at how Germany has done so well in the propaganda game, selling an image of a long-failed state that refuses to go along with the minimal conditions demanded in return for generous aid. The facts prove otherwise: From the mid-90’s to the beginning of the crisis, the Greek economy was growing at a faster rate than the EU average (3.9% vs 2.4%). The Greeks took austerity to heart, slashing expenditures and increasing taxes.

They even achieved a primary surplus (that is, tax revenues exceeded expenditures excluding interest payments), and their fiscal position would have been truly impressive had they not gone into depression. Their depression—25% decline in GDP and 25% unemployment, with youth unemployment twice that—is because they did what was demanded of them, not because of their failure to do so. It was the predictable and predicted response to the austerity. The question now is: What’s next, assuming (as seems ever more likely) they are effectively thrown out of the euro? It’s likely that the European Central Bank will refuse to do its job—as the Central Bank for Greece, it should do what every central bank is supposed to do, act as a lender of last resort.

And if it refuses to do that, Greece will have no option but to create a parallel currency. The ECB has already begun tightening the screws, making access to funds more and more difficult. This is not the end of the world: Currencies come and go. The euro is just a 16-year-old experiment, poorly designed and engineered not to work—in a crisis money flows from the weak country’s banks to the strong, leading to divergence. GDP today is more than 17% below where it would have been had the relatively modest growth trajectory of Europe before the euro just continued. I believe the euro has much to do with this disappointing performance. [..]

The U.S. was generous with Germany as we defeated it. Now, it is time for the U.S. to be generous with our friends in Greece in their time of need, as they have been crushed for the second time in a century by Germany, this time with the support of the troika. At a technical level, the Federal Reserve needs to create a swap line with Greece’s central bank, which—as a result of the default of the ECB in fulfilling its responsibilities—will have to take on once again the role of lender of last resort. Greece needs unconditional humanitarian aid; it needs Americans to buy its products, take vacations there, and show a solidarity with Greece and a humanity that its European partners were not able to display.

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“Greece is no-one’s hostage,” he said. “The Greek people’s No vote, and I am referring to all of the people, is not going to become a humiliating Yes.”

Greece Presents €2 Billion Russian Gas Deal (FT)

Greece has mapped out details of a landmark €2bn gas project with Russia, a scheme that could stir tensions with Brussels just as Athens seeks a third bail-out. Panayiotis Lafazanis, the firebrand leftist energy minister, presented the project to Greek energy executives on Thursday in a defiant speech, vowing that Athens would not be pushed around by EU institutions, writes Christian Oliver. EU policymakers are concerned that Russia could take advantage of the crisis to pull Greece deeper into its orbit and pipeline politics is critical to relations between the two nations. Athens and Moscow say their new project, the so-called South European Pipeline, will bring 47 billion cubic metres of Gazprom’s gas into Europe by 2018.

Mr Lafazanis promised that it would create 20,000 much needed jobs in Greece. This promised deal with Russia is a sharp rebuke to Brussels, which wants to reduce dependence on Gazprom and argues that southeastern Europe should diversify its supply by prioritising gas from Azerbaijan. Opening his remarks with pugnacious references to the eurozone crisis, Mr Lafazanis said that Greece was aiming to secure a deal with Brussels as quickly as possible. However, he then warned EU institutions that Athens was not about to roll over. “Greece is no-one’s hostage,” he said. “The Greek people’s No vote, and I am referring to all of the people, is not going to become a humiliating Yes.”

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Only 5 months late. Or is that 5 years?

Germany Concedes Greece Needs Debt Relief, Greek Plan Awaited (Reuters)

Germany conceded on Thursday that Greece would need some debt restructuring as part of any new loan programme to make its economy viable as the Greek cabinet raced to finalize reform proposals to avert an imminent economic meltdown. The admission by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble came hours before a midnight deadline for Athens to submit a reform plan meant to convince European partners to give it another loan to save it from a possible exit from the euro. Greece has already had two bailouts worth €240 billion euros from the eurozone and the IMF, but its economy has shrunk by a quarter, unemployment is more than 25% and one in two young people is out of work.

Schaeuble, who has made no secret of his scepticism about Greece’s fitness to remain in the currency area, told a conference in Frankfurt: “Debt sustainability is not feasible without a haircut and I think the IMF is correct in saying that. But he added: “There cannot be a haircut because it would infringe the system of the European Union.” He offered no solution to the conundrum, which implied that Greece’s debt problem might not be soluble within the eurozone. But he did say there was limited scope for “reprofiling” Greek debt by extending loan maturities, shaving interest rates and lengthening a moratorium on debt service payments.

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Germany resists all real history. Inferiority complex?

Germany Failed To Learn From Its Own History-And Greece Pays The Price (WaPo)

One of the great paradoxes of our time is how Germany has done so exemplary a job in recent decades of understanding and accepting responsibility for the horrors of the Nazi era while continuing to entertain a willful ignorance of the economic policy errors that paved the Nazis’ path to power. The solution to this riddle is that Germans’ deep-seated debt obsession (in German, the words for “debt” and “guilt” are the same) has blinded them to the consequences of that obsession. You’d think, for instance, that Germans would have learned from John Maynard Keynes’s 1920 book “The Economic Consequences of the Peace,” which correctly predicted that the onerous reparations inflicted on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles were economically unsustainable and politically perilous to the prospects for German democracy.

You’d think they’d have learned from their own descent into Nazism that balancing budgets when unemployment is at record heights can undermine a democracy’s viability. You’d think they’d have learned from the London debt agreement of 1953 that debt forgiveness and reasonable repayment terms can foster prosperity and strengthen democracy in the debtor nation — which, in this case, happened to be Germany. That Germans have learned none of these lessons is now — tragically, for Greece — apparent. Germany’s insistence that Greece continue to slash services and social investment if it is ever to qualify for debt forgiveness remains unaltered, even though Greek unemployment stands at 25%, even though 40% of Greek children live in poverty, even though a neo-Nazi party (Golden Dawn) has come out of nowhere to win seats in Greece’s parliament.

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Weidmann is saying weird things, as always.

Weidmann Warns Greek Banks Concerns Rising By Day (FT)

Jens Weidmann, the president of Germany’s Bundesbank, has said doubts about Greek banks solvency are legitimate and rising by the day. Mr Weidmann also said the majority of Greeks who had voted ‘no’ in Sunday’s referendum had spoken out .. against contributing any further to the solvency of their country through additional consolidation measures and reforms. The Bundesbank president, a member of the governing council of the European Central Bank who has called for Greek banks ¨ 89bn liquidity lifeline to be scrapped, said in needed to be crystal clear that responsibility for Greece lay with Athens and international creditors, and not the ECB.

The Eurosystem [of eurozone central banks] should not increase the liquidity provision, and capital controls need to stay in force until an appropriate support package has been agreed by all parties and the solvency of both the Greek government and the Greek banking system has been ensured. The Bundesbank president hit out at Athens for causing economic ruin. [Eurozone member states] can decide for themselves not to service their debts, to collect taxes inadequately, and this is something I particularly fear in the case of Greece to lead their country s economy into deep trouble, he said in Frankfurt on Wednesday. The Syriza-led government had not only walked out on the previous agreements, but has been widely criticised as an unreliable negotiating partner. Mr Weidmann’s comments came as France s finance minister Michel Sapin, who is pushing for a deal that would allow Greece to stay in the eurozone, emphasised the greater cost of a Grexit.

“What s costlier? That Greece exits the eurozone and defaults on all its debt? Asking the question is answering it”, Mr Sapin told Radio Classique on Thursday. “A deal is the best solution for Greece and Europe.” “Greek banks have been closed for more than a week. Greece is already in a pre-chaos stat”e, he said. “How history will judge us?” However, Mr Sapin reiterated the need for the Greek government to present credible reforms as well as difficult decisions to balance the budget. “There are taxes to raise, it’s difficult,” he said. Mr Sapin saluted the good attitude of Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos at the latest eurogroup meeting of finance ministers. “He came with a lot of modesty”, he said.

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“How much money do you want to leave the euro?”

Greek Government Insider On 5 Months Of ‘Humiliation’ And ‘Blackmail’ (MP)

A senior member of Greece’s negotiating team with its European creditors agreed to a meeting last week in Athens with Mediapart special correspondent Christian Salmon. Speaking on condition that his name is withheld, he detailed the history of the protracted and bitter negotiations between the radical-left Syriza government, elected in January, and international lenders for the provision of a new bailout for the debt-ridden country. The almost two-hour interview in English took place just days before last Sunday’s referendum on the latest drastic austerity-driven bailout terms offered by the creditors, and opposed by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, and which were finally rejected by 61.3% of Greek voters.

While the ministerial advisor slams the stance of the international creditors, who he accuses of leading a strategy of deliberate suffocation of Greece’s finances and economy, he is also critical of some of the decisions taken by Athens. His account also throws light on the personal tensions surrounding the talks led by former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who resigned from his post on Monday deploring “a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my ‘absence’ from its meetings”. The advisor cites threats proffered to Varoufakis by Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem, warning he would sink Greece’s banks unless the Tsipras government bowed to the harsh deal on offer, and by German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, who he says demanded: “How much money do you want to leave the euro?”

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“..amnesties generally favour wealthy people who can pay accountants to exploit loopholes..”

Swiss Poised To Support Greek Tax Amnesty (SI)

Struggling to pay off more than €300 billion in debts, Greece is banking on Switzerland to help it recover a treasure trove of undeclared assets that tax cheats have stashed in alpine vaults. But anti-tax haven campaigners are sceptical about “undemocratic” tax amnesties that are prone to loopholes, allowing many tax dodgers to wriggle out of their obligations. “The devil is always in the detail with these deals. If Switzerland can claim it is helping to clear untaxed assets out of its banks, this could provide it with a public relations service,” Nicholas Shaxson of Tax Justice Network told swissinfo.ch. “But amnesties generally favour wealthy people who can pay accountants to exploit loopholes, such as insurance wrappers and discretionary trusts.”

Such “slippery structures” render assets “technically declared”, allowing them to remain offshore under the radar of amnesties, Shaxson added. “Tax amnesties only make a difference if the public believe that, once they have ended, the government will assertively go after people who did not disclose,” Heather Low of Global Financial Integrity (GFI) told swissinfo.ch. “Tax cheats in the United States would be afraid of the authorities if they did not disclose during an amnesty. I’m not so sure this would be the case in Greece.” In April, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis announced plans for a global tax amnesty to repatriate overseas funds to Greece. It is believed the government has settled for a one-off 21% levy on those who come clean, pending parliamentary approval of the proposal.

Negotiations between Greece and Switzerland on how best to recover black money hidden in Swiss banks have been ongoing since 2012. But the two sides are reported to be edging closer to a solution that would allow banks to cooperate. While Switzerland would not be an official partner to a Greek tax amnesty, the approval and cooperation of the Swiss authorities would be integral to the scheme working. To this end, two meetings were arranged between the countries in March and April to discuss the practical details of persuading Greek tax cheats to sign up to the amnesty. While not yet concluded, Varoufakis felt encouraged enough to announce Greece’s intended global tax amnesty following a meeting with Swiss officials in April.

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“If Russia really wants to take Europe, all they have to do is be patient.”

The Lesson for the World Coming from Greece (Martin Armstrong)

The mainstream news is painting the Greeks as the bad guys, and the Troika as the savior of Europe. Quite frankly, it is really disgusting. Pictures of an elderly Greek pensioner have gone viral, depicting what the Troika is deliberately doing to the Greek people by punishing them for their own failed design of the euro in a system that is just economically unsustainable. The heartbreaking photographs circulating are of 77-year-old retiree, Giorgos Chatzifotiadis, after he collapsed on the ground openly in tears, driven to despair, outside a Greek bank with his savings book and identity card strewn next to him on the ground. This illustrates the horror the Troika is deliberately inflicting upon the Greek population.

This image illustrates the core of the issue: ordinary Greeks tormented by EU politicians who pretend to care about people. This is not a Greek debt crisis, this is a Euro Crisis and they refuse to admit that what they designed was solely for the takeover of Europe at the cost of the future of everyone, from pensioners to the youth. Chatzifotiadis queued up at three banks in Greece’s second city of Thessaloniki on Friday in the hope of withdrawing pensions on behalf of him and his wife. When he went to a fourth bank, he was told he could not withdraw his €120; the ordeal simply became too much and he fell down in tears in total desperation. His comments were simply that he “cannot stand to see my country in this distress”. He continued to say, “That’s why I feel so beaten, more than for my own personal problems.”

This is just the tip of the iceberg. We are facing terrible times ahead because socialism is completely collapsing. Government employees have lined their pockets, which is precisely the endgame and how Rome collapsed. It was not the barbarians at the gate. It was that the Roman army was not paid and they began hailing their various generals as emperor and they attacked cities who did not support their choice. Only after weakening themselves, then the barbarians came in for easy pickings. If Russia really wants to take Europe, all they have to do is be patient. They will self-destruct for the Troika cannot see any change in thinking for that means they must admit that they were wrong from the outset.

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“Schaeuble has a plan for Greece’s exit from the Eurozone,” and added, “this is his best chance to succeed.”

Varoufakis: Schäuble Wants Grexit, I Prefer Be an MP Known as Yanis (GF)

Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis admitted that Germany appears to have a plan to force Greece outside the Eurozone, even though while he was in office he insisted that Grexit scenarios were a bluff to push the Greek government to accept harsh austerity measures. Talking with reporters at the Greek Parliament café, Varoufakis noted that Wolfgang Schaeuble is the only Eurozone Minister with a specific plan. He also said that the German Finance Minister completely controls the majority of the Eurogroup except for French Finance Minister Michel Sapin.

“Schaeuble has a plan for Greece’s exit from the Eurozone,” and added, “this is his best chance to succeed.” When asked if he believes the Germans are taking into account the estimated cost of a Grexit, Varoufakis argued that Schaeuble believes losses can be controlled. Furthermore, the former Greek Finance Minister stated that it is possible that his exit from the Greek government was due to Schaeuble’s pressure.

As for whether he believes that a deal will be achieved in the next 24 hours, he initially said “no comment” but later added: “I would like an agreement to be reached but only if it is also a solution. At the moment, we cannot judge the outcome.” People at the café called him “Minister” but he always answered: “I’m not a Minister. I’m a member of Parliament.” “Once a Minister, always a Minister,” he said, adding that he prefers to be an MP and be called Yanis. Asked to comment on the recent referendum results, he stated that the outcome was epic and grandiose, although he avoided to answer the question about whether the citizens voted “No” but the government is following the “Yes” direction.

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Nice compilation.

Max Keiser and Yanis Varoufakis Retrospective (2012 footage)

Taken from Keiser Report episode 247 & 301 a look back at the dialogue between Max & Yanis in 2012 which should give some insight into the battle with financial terrorism unfolding in Greece.

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“There’s quite precisely no common ground between the two belief systems, and yet self-proclaimed Christians who spout Rand’s turgid drivel at every opportunity make up a significant fraction of the Republican Party just now.”

Darwin’s Casino (John Michael Greer)

Our age has no shortage of curious features, but for me, at least, one of the oddest is the way that so many people these days don’t seem to be able to think through the consequences of their own beliefs. Pick an ideology, any ideology, straight across the spectrum from the most devoutly religious to the most stridently secular, and you can count on finding a bumper crop of people who claim to hold that set of beliefs, and recite them with all the uncomprehending enthusiasm of a well-trained mynah bird, but haven’t noticed that those beliefs contradict other beliefs they claim to hold with equal devotion. I’m not talking here about ordinary hypocrisy. The hypocrites we have with us always; our species being what it is, plenty of people have always seen the advantages of saying one thing and doing another.

No, what I have in mind is saying one thing and saying another, without ever noticing that if one of those statements is true, the other by definition has to be false. My readers may recall the way that cowboy-hatted heavies in old Westerns used to say to each other, “This town ain’t big enough for the two of us;” there are plenty of ideas and beliefs that are like that, but too many modern minds resemble nothing so much as an OK Corral where the gunfight never happens. An example that I’ve satirized in an earlier post here is the bizarre way that so many people on the rightward end of the US political landscape these days claim to be, at one and the same time, devout Christians and fervid adherents of Ayn Rand’s violently atheist and anti-Christian ideology. 

The difficulty here, of course, is that Jesus tells his followers to humble themselves before God and help the poor, while Rand told hers to hate God, wallow in fantasies of their own superiority, and kick the poor into the nearest available gutter. There’s quite precisely no common ground between the two belief systems, and yet self-proclaimed Christians who spout Rand’s turgid drivel at every opportunity make up a significant fraction of the Republican Party just now. Still, it’s only fair to point out that this sort of weird disconnect is far from unique to religious people, or for that matter to Republicans. One of the places it crops up most often nowadays is the remarkable unwillingness of people who say they accept Darwin’s theory of evolution to think through what that theory implies about the limits of human intelligence.

If Darwin’s right, as I’ve had occasion to point out here several times already, human intelligence isn’t the world-shaking superpower our collective egotism likes to suppose. It’s simply a somewhat more sophisticated version of the sort of mental activity found in many other animals. The thing that supposedly sets it apart from all other forms of mentation, the use of abstract language, isn’t all that unique; several species of cetaceans and an assortment of the brainier birds communicate with their kin using vocalizations that show all the signs of being languages in the full sense of the word—that is, structured patterns of abstract vocal signs that take their meaning from convention rather than instinct.

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“Quoting a fourth century bishop, he called the unfettered pursuit of money “the dung of the devil”..”

Pope Calls For New Economic Order, Criticizes Capitalism (Reuters)

Pope Francis on Thursday urged the downtrodden to change the world economic order, denouncing a “new colonialism” by agencies that impose austerity programs and calling for the poor to have the “sacred rights” of labor, lodging and land. In one of the longest, most passionate and sweeping speeches of his pontificate, the Argentine-born pope also asked forgiveness for the sins committed by the Roman Catholic Church in its treatment of native Americans during what he called the “so-called conquest of America.” Quoting a fourth century bishop, he called the unfettered pursuit of money “the dung of the devil,” and said poor countries should not be reduced to being providers of raw material and cheap labor for developed countries.

Repeating some of the themes of his landmark encyclical “Laudato Si” on the environment last month, Francis said time was running out to save the planet from perhaps irreversible harm to the ecosystem. Francis made the address to participants of the second world meeting of popular movements, an international body that brings together organizations of people on the margins of society, including the poor, the unemployed and peasants who have lost their land. The Vatican hosted the first meeting last year. He said he supported their efforts to obtain “so elementary and undeniably necessary a right as that of the three “L’s”: land, lodging and labor.”

“Let us not be afraid to say it: we want change, real change, structural change,” the pope said, decrying a system that “has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature.” This system is by now intolerable: farm workers find it intolerable, laborers find it intolerable, communities find it intolerable, peoples find it intolerable … The earth itself – our sister, Mother Earth, as Saint Francis would say – also finds it intolerable,” he said in an hour-long speech that was interrupted by applause and cheering dozens of times.

The pontiff appeared to take a swipe at international monetary organizations such as the IMF and the development aid policies by some developed countries. “No actual or established power has the right to deprive peoples of the full exercise of their sovereignty. Whenever they do so, we see the rise of new forms of colonialism which seriously prejudice the possibility of peace and justice,” he said. “The new colonialism takes on different faces. At times it appears as the anonymous influence of mammon: corporations, loan agencies, certain ‘free trade’ treaties, and the imposition of measures of ‘austerity’ which always tighten the belt of workers and the poor,” he said.

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Jun 272015
 


Lewis Wickes Hine Workshop of Sanitary Ice Cream Cone Co., OK City 1917

A Gay-Rights Decision for the Ages (Bloomberg)
An End to the Blackmail (Alexis Tsipras)
Tsipras Calls Referendum on Greek Debt Deal for July 5 (Bloomberg)
An Alternative Version Of How The Greek Crisis Could Have Played Out (Whelan)
“With The Euro, We’ll Forever Have A Noose Around Our Necks” (WSJ)
Creditors To Ringfence Greek Economy If Tsipras Refuses To Give In (Guardian)
Why It Won’t Be a Default If Greece Misses IMF Payment Next Week (Bloomberg)
Is The Greek Crisis Too Big For Europe’s Most Powerful Woman? (Augstein)
Tsipras Rejects Bailout Extension, “Won’t Be Blackmailed” (ZH)
Paul Craig Roberts: Greek Government May Be Assassinated If They Pivot East (KWN)
There Will Be No “Grexit” (Jim Rickards)
Greece Will Survive, But Will The Euro Or The EU? (MarketWatch)
Euro-Area Bank Lending Grows at Fastest Pace Since February 2012 (Bloomberg)
China Politburo Opines On Market Crash: “Black Friday Massacre” (Zero Hedge)
For The First Time Ever, QE Has Officially Failed (Zero Hedge)
Dutch City Utrecht To Try Out Universal, Unconditional ‘Basic Income’ (Ind.)
Half Of Europe’s Electricity Set To Be From Renewables By 2030 (Guardian)

Wow, look at that. Even Bloomberg manages to get it right. Congrats to all my gay friends- happy to say they are plentiful. Big day no matter how you look at it.

A Gay-Rights Decision for the Ages (Bloomberg)

This one is for the ages. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion for the U.S. Supreme Court announcing a right to gay marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges will take its place alongside Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia in the pantheon of great liberal opinions. The only tragic contrast with those landmarks in the history of equality is that both of those were decided unanimously. Friday’s gay-rights opinion went 5-4, with each of the court’s conservative justices writing a dissent of his own. Eventually, legal equality for gay people will seem just as automatic and natural as legal equality for blacks. But history will recall that when decided, Obergefell didn’t reflect national consensus, much less the consensus of the court itself.

Kennedy’s opinion offered two different yet interrelated constitutional rationales, one focused on the institution of marriage, the other on the equality of gay people. First, he made the case that marriage is a fundamental liberty right under the due process clause of the Constitution, which says no one may be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. Applying what’s known as “substantive” due process analysis, Kennedy held that the government may not infringe the liberty to marry absent a compelling interest and along narrowly tailored lines to achieve that interest. Because no such interest exists, gay people as well as straight people must have the right to marry. This same approach was used by the court in the Loving case, which struck down laws barring interracial marriage.

It was symbolically important for Kennedy to connect same-sex marriage to marriage between the races. Kennedy’s favorite concept of dignity figured large in the finding that marriage is a fundamental right. “The lifelong union of a man and a woman always has promised nobility and dignity to all persons, without regard to their station in life.” The reference to dignity connected the decision to Kennedy’s earlier gay-rights decisions, which featured the concept centrally. It is now an important part of our constitutional law — no matter that it doesn’t appear in the Constitution. Another crucial feature of the opinion was Kennedy’s recognition that marriage has evolved over time. This acknowledgement counteracted the conservatives’ emphasis on tradition in their dissents.

It also resonated with the doctrine of due process, which looks to evolving tradition to identify the content of protected liberty. When it came to equality, Kennedy avoided announcing that laws burdening gay people would be subject to especially strict scrutiny, like laws burdening racial minorities, or even what’s called intermediate scrutiny, like laws differentially burdening the sexes. Instead, he spoke of the “synergy” between due process and equality. In legal terms, this almost certainly meant that once a fundamental right is invoked, any distinction between people for any reason requires strict scrutiny – a longtime doctrinal norm.

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Integral text. Worth the space.

An End to the Blackmail (Alexis Tsipras)

Televized speech, Athens, June 27, 2015, 1 AM local time. For six months now the Greek government has been waging a battle in conditions of unprecedented economic suffocation to implement the mandate you gave us on January 25. The mandate we were negotiating with our partners was to end the austerity and to allow prosperity and social justice to return to our country. It was a mandate for a sustainable agreement that would respect both democracy and common European rules and lead to the final exit from the crisis. Throughout this period of negotiations, we were asked to implement the agreements concluded by the previous governments with the Memoranda, although they were categorically condemned by the Greek people in the recent elections. However, not for a moment did we think of surrendering, that is to betray your trust.

After five months of hard bargaining, our partners, unfortunately, issued at the Eurogroup the day before yesterday an ultimatum to Greek democracy and to the Greek people. An ultimatum that is contrary to the founding principles and values of Europe, the values of our common European project. They asked the Greek government to accept a proposal that accumulates a new unsustainable burden on the Greek people and undermines the recovery of the Greek economy and society, a proposal that not only perpetuates the state of uncertainty but accentuates social inequalities even more. The proposal of institutions includes: measures leading to further deregulation of the labor market, pension cuts, further reductions in public sector wages and an increase in VAT on food, dining and tourism, while eliminating tax breaks for the Greek islands.

These proposals directly violate the European social and fundamental rights: they show that concerning work, equality and dignity, the aim of some of the partners and institutions is not a viable and beneficial agreement for all parties but the humiliation of the entire Greek people. These proposals mainly highlight the insistence of the IMF in the harsh and punitive austerity and make more timely than ever the need for the leading European powers to seize the opportunity and take initiatives which will finally bring to a definitive end the Greek sovereign debt crisis, a crisis affecting other European countries and threatening the very future of European integration.

Fellow Greeks, right now weighs on our shoulders the historic responsibility towards the struggles and sacrifices of the Greek people for the consolidation of democracy and national sovereignty. Our responsibility for the future of our country. And this responsibility requires us to answer the ultimatum on the basis of the sovereign will of the Greek people. A short while ago at the cabinet meeting I suggested the organization of a referendum, so that the Greek people are able to decide in a sovereign way. The suggestion was unanimously accepted.

Tomorrow the House of Representatives will be urgently convened to ratify the proposal of the cabinet for a referendum next Sunday, July 5 on the question of the acceptance or the rejection of the proposal of institutions. I have already informed about my decision the president of France and the chancellor of Germany, the president of the ECB, and tomorrow my letter will formally ask the EU leaders and institutions to extend for a few days the current program in order for the Greek people to decide, free from any pressure and blackmail, as required by the constitution of our country and the democratic tradition of Europe.

Fellow Greeks, to the blackmailing of the ultimatum that asks us to accept a severe and degrading austerity without end and without any prospect for a social and economic recovery, I ask you to respond in a sovereign and proud way, as the history of the Greek people commands. To authoritarianism and harsh austerity, we will respond with democracy, calmly and decisively. Greece, the birthplace of democracy will send a resounding democratic response to Europe and the world. I am personally committed to respect the outcome of your democratic choice, whatever that is. And I’m absolutely confident that your choice will honor the history of our country and send a message of dignity to the world.

In these critical moments, we all have to remember that Europe is the common home of peoples. That in Europe there are no owners and guests. Greece is and will remain an integral part of Europe and Europe is an integral part of Greece. But without democracy, Europe will be a Europe without identity and without a compass. I invite you all to display national unity and calm in order to take the right decisions. For us, for future generations, for the history of the Greeks. For the sovereignty and dignity of our people.

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Still no debt relief proposed, though troika has knpwn all along that would break any deal. Not in good faith.

Tsipras Calls Referendum on Greek Debt Deal for July 5 (Bloomberg)

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called a referendum on the terms offered by creditors for the latest aid package, saying they’re seeking to humiliate the Greek people who must provide a democratic response. The vote will take place on July 5, Tsipras said in a televised address in the early hours of Saturday. A Greek government official said the country’s banks will open as normal on Monday and no capital controls are planned, asking not to be identified in line with policy. Tsipras said that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi have been informed of the plan, and he’ll request an extension of Greece’s existing bailout, due to end June 30, by a few days to permit the vote. Further details weren’t immediately clear.

Later on Saturday, European finance ministers were due to discuss details of their latest proposal, which would unlock €15.5 billion and extend Greece’s program through November, in return for a commitment to pension cuts and higher taxes that Tsipras opposes. While German Chancellor Angela Merkel touted the five-month bailout extension as “very generous,” Tsipras compared its terms to an “ultimatum” and “blackmail.” It doesn’t include the debt relief that his government seeks.

Tsipras came to power with a mandate to end the austerity imposed by Greece’s creditors while keeping the country in the euro. By calling a referendum on the latest EU offer, his government “will argue that it does not have the mandate to sign it without consulting the Greek people,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “I am convinced that such a referendum would be comfortably won,” he said. “However, it will be risky as the uncertainty is likely to see deposits flee and deposit controls imposed until the result.” Failure to reach a Greek deal also puts at risk a payment due June 30 to the International Monetary Fund.

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Must read.

An Alternative Version Of How The Greek Crisis Could Have Played Out (Whelan)

The Grexit scenario relies crucially on the Eurozone not having a proper lender of last resort or a functioning banking union. It is easy to imagine an alternative scenario to the current one. Consider the following alternative version of how the Greek crisis could have played out. As tension builds up in Greece prior to the Greek election in early 2015, Mario Draghi assures depositors in Greece that the ECB has fully tested the Greek banks and they do not have capital shortfalls. For this reason, their money is safe. Draghi announces that the ECB will thus provide full support to the Greek banks even if the government defaults on its debts, subject to those banks remaining solvent.

Eurozone governments agree that, should Greek banks require recapitalisation to maintain solvency, the European Stabilisation Mechanism (ESM) will provide the capital in return for an ownership stake in the banks. Provided with assurances of liquidity and solvency support, there is no bank run as Greek citizens believe there banking system is safe even if the government’s negotiations with creditors go badly. The ECB stays out of the negotiations for a new creditor deal for Greece (because they are not a political organisation and are not involved in directly loaning money to the government) and its officials assure everyone that the integrity of the common currency is in no way at stake. There are no legal impediments to this scenario.

Despite the constant blather from ECB officials about how it is constantly constrained by its own persnikety rules, it is well known that the ECB can stretch these rules pretty much as far as it likes. Supporting banks that you have deemed solvent is pretty standard central banking practice. So Draghi’s ECB could have provided full and unequivocal support to the Greek banks if they wished. They just chose not to. Similarly, procedures are in place for the ESM to invest directly in banks so a credible assurance of solvency could have been offered. Why did this not happen? Politics. European governments did not feel like providing assurances to Greek citizens about their banking system at the same time as their government was openly discussing the possibility of not paying back existing loans from European governments. Indeed, the ability to unleash the bank-driven Grexit mechanism has been the ace in the creditors’ pack all along.

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And you children too.

“With The Euro, We’ll Forever Have A Noose Around Our Necks” (WSJ)

CHALKIDA, Greece—This small city once had a major cement plant, timber mill and ironworks. All are gone. It is trying to develop a tourism industry, but there is no money to upgrade hotels or roads. This week, as with most places in Greece, it is waiting for the country’s future to be decided in meeting rooms in Brussels. Many here are urging Prime Minister Alexis Tspiras to stand firm in his battle with Europe. “He’s doing the right thing,” said Yannis Liopides, a retired electrician in a textile factory, sitting in a square on Thursday afternoon. The square abuts a promenade fronting onto a crystalline sea. “If Tsipras doesn’t do anything, the only ones left are Golden Dawn,” he said, referring to the far-right party whose leaders are on trial for allegedly running a criminal organization.

Mr. Tsipras may be isolated in negotiations with his fellow European leaders, but he still has plenty of friends here. Many Greeks—and many well beyond Mr. Tsipras’s coterie on the far left—have adopted a mood of resistance, forged by a perception that the country’s European creditors are pushing their demands too far. Europe and the IMF “want a country that is a colony,” said Thanasis Stratis, a cement-plant worker laid off in September. “They want to squeeze every last drop from it.” Chalkida sits at the neck of a narrow sea channel that separates a long island from the Greek mainland. Outside the city, patchwork fields lead to pine forests and on to rocky mountains. Along the coast is a port and shipyards and the hulking cement plant where Mr. Stratis once worked in the accounting department.

A big wave of industrialization came to Chalkida in the 1970s, said Mayor Christos Pagonis. Deindustrialization began in the 1990s and accelerated. “It has created thousands of unemployed,” said Mr. Pagonis, who puts the unemployment rate at more than 30%. The cement plant shut in spring 2013. The economic crisis had all but stopped construction activity in Greece. The plant was incurring losses, said a spokeswoman for Lafarge SA, which owned the facility. At the time, the company estimated that closure would save it €18 million ($20 million) a year. Prevented by Greek labor law from firing the 236 workers en masse, the French industrial company instead has laid them off in small chunks of a dozen or so each month. Only a few remain on the payroll to guard the now-quiet plant, where dogs nap in the sun and eucalyptus trees flutter in the sharp breeze.

Mr. Stratis and a handful of other plant workers man a kiosk in the city center, where they post the number of days the plant has been closed (821, as of Thursday). The names of the laid-off workers are stapled to the wall on 16 laminated sheets. Elias Koukouras, the union president and one of the few still remaining on the payroll, said Greece should quit the eurozone. “The country needs to be rebuilt. With the euro, we’ll forever have a noose around our necks.”

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Wishful fencing.

Creditors To Ringfence Greek Economy If Tsipras Refuses To Give In (Guardian)

Eurozone finance ministers and Greece’s creditors are to draw up plans for emergency measures to ringfence the country’s financial system unless the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, accepts the creditors’ terms for a five-month extension of Athens’ bailout on Saturday. Greece has its last chance to bow to the lenders’ terms following five months of stalemate at a meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Brussels on Saturday afternoon, the fifth such session in 10 days. Fearing a financial implosion and social unrest in the event of the negotiations collapsing, the ministers are scheduled to draw up plans on Saturday that could involve Greece imposing capital controls, including curbs on ATM withdrawals, to stem a flood of funds out of the ailing Greek financial system.

“Game over”, said senior EU officials engaged in back-to-back meetings and negotiations for the past 10 days, as the brinkmanship in the Greek negotiations reached breaking point. If no deal is agreed at the weekend, Greece will miss a €1.6bn payment due to the International Monetary Fund next Tuesday, along with access to emergency support from the ECB that is keeping the Greek banking system afloat. The creditors have prepared a new funding offer, providing a lifeline to keep Greece afloat until the end of November by extending the bailout by five months and supplying €15.5bn in loans tied to budget cuts and tax rises.

As a two-day EU leaders’ summit ended in Brussels on Friday, several senior officials said Tsipras had to make a choice between accepting the creditors’ ultimatum or embarking on a road that could take Greece out of the euro. The chances of saving Greece were put at 50-50. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who talked privately with the Greek leader in Brussels on Friday morning, urged him to go the “extra step” and accept what she described as “a very generous offer”. She ruled out any more emergency summits on the Greek crisis and delivered a pointed message to Tsipras by stressing how, during the Cyprus bailout two years ago, Cypriot banks had to be closed “for a few days”, forcing the political leaders to come to Brussels to deal with the creditor institutions and the Eurogroup finance ministers in order to resolve the issue.

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The refrendum trumps all this. Let’s see of Lagarde has the guts to get even more political.

Why It Won’t Be a Default If Greece Misses IMF Payment Next Week (Bloomberg)

If Greece fails to pay the $1.7 billion it owes the IMF on Tuesday, it might be worse for the lender than for Greece. There’s a difference between missing a payment to bond investors, and to an official institution such as the IMF. Under the fund’s policy, countries that miss payments are deemed to be in “arrears.” The lender plans to stick to that language, rather than using the term “default,” IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said Thursday. The three major credit-rating companies have also said failure to pay the IMF wouldn’t constitute a formal default. So while the practical consequences for Greece may be temporary and small as long as the nation remains in talks with creditors for an accord, the blow to the IMF’s reputation as the world’s lender of last resort could be longer-lasting, making it tougher for the fund to win support for some future bailouts.

“There’s going to be severe scrutiny of interventions in countries that can either be considered wealthy in their own right or are part of a larger geo-economic structure like the euro zone,” Benn Steil, director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Non-payment would land Greece in a club of countries in arrears that currently includes Zimbabwe, Sudan and Somalia. The three nations have combined overdue payments of about $1.8 billion. The bottom line is that a missed IMF payment probably won’t trigger a wave of defaults on other loans provided by the country’s other official creditors or debt held by private investors. “Non-payment of the IMF is unlikely to cause a catastrophic cascade of other liabilities,” said Zoso Davies, a credit strategist at Barclays Plc in London.

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Good to see some incisive words on the disaster that’s fast enveloping Merkel and her legacy. Can you save that legacy in the next 7 days?

Is The Greek Crisis Too Big For Europe’s Most Powerful Woman? (Augstein)

nngela Merkel has recently been making much use of the old cliche, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way”. She has rolled it out to Alexis Tsipras and the Greek people, and David Cameron has heard it fall from her lips at least once – because, of course, she knows all too well that a Greek exit from the euro would hardly bolster Britain’s enthusiasm for the EU. The Greek crisis is the biggest challenge Merkel has had to face in the 10 years of her chancellorship. If Greece had to exit the single currency, Merkel would go down in history as the one politician who had the power to stop the EU’s decline but failed to do so. Some experts believe that to a large extent she contributed to the crisis: had she wholeheartedly backed a full bailout in 2010, the collapse of the Greek economy might have been averted.

Instead, Merkel involved the IMF– against the advice of her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble. Those well disposed towards the German chancellor say she brought in the IMF to prevent Greece from putting the European commission under too much pressure. But at least as important is the less flattering interpretation: that the most powerful woman in Europe (if not the world) shied away from taking sole responsibility for Greece’s fate because sharing it out among as many players as possible was a way of protecting herself from any blame. Unlike her mentor, the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, Merkel did not embark on her political career with much instinctive passion for the European project.

During her childhood in the GDR, her mother’s praise of the west coloured Merkel’s view of the world – but the west then was the United States. Realising that the EU is worth every political effort has been something she has had to learn. Added to the reticence with which Merkel approaches any momentous decision, it is easy to see why the German government did so little to nip the Greek crisis in the bud. Acting in unison, the German leader and her finance minister, the IMF, the European commission and the European Central Bank forced an austerity programme on the Greek people based on the principles of neoliberal economics. In the former eastern bloc states such shock therapy had succeeded in returning struggling economies to growth. However, it generated immense hardship and created profound social divisions: the well-off benefited because investments became cheaper, but the bulk of the population suffered.

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“We will not accept the proposal, as we said, we were waiting to bring us another proposal tomorrow.”

Tsipras Rejects Bailout Extension, “Won’t Be Blackmailed” (ZH)

Update: Protothema now says the Greek parliament will meet on Saturday and a referendum will be called as early as next week. Whether this is simply a last minute attempt to put pressure on EU finance ministers ahead of Saturday’s Eurogroup meeting remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure: Tsipras is playing a dangerous game with the ECB ahead of a difficult week that could very well see the imposition of capital controls. Update: Protothema is reporting that Tsipras has confided in a fellow EU official that if the country’s creditors insist on sticking to pension and VAT red lines and if Friday’s bailout extension proposal (which the Greek government apparently views as a patronizing stopgap) is the troika’s final offer, he is prepared to call for snap elections. Via Protothema (Google translated):

“The dramatic developments of the last few hours, following the government’s move to reject the proposal of the creditors may conceal preparation for use of the popular verdict, a decision which is expected to be finalized in the next few hours if the lenders do not move from its rigid positions. According secure information protothema.gr, a few hours ago he Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras European leader confided in Eurozone member country adjacent friendly in Greece that the data are up to this moment is ready even to call early elections. This revelation of thought by the Greek prime minister to the foreign leader can be interpreted in two ways: Either Mr. Tsipras is ready for “plan B” if tomorrow the negotiation fails or leaked deliberately in order to exert indirect pressure on lenders to mitigate their requirements.

Upon completion of the meeting Mr. Tsipras with Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande, the Greek side revealed that the Prime Minister pointed out to the leaders of Germany and France that he does not understand why the institutions insist on so hard measures. The prime minister insisted his decision to reject the proposal of the creditors for a five-month extension of the existing agreement with a funding of €15.5 billions. “The proposal does not cover us, because the financial part of barely meets the needs for payment of installments to the lenders, not help anywhere else the economy,” emphasized a close associate of Alexis Tsipras and adds: “We will not accept the proposal, as we said, we were waiting to bring us another proposal tomorrow.”

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And then there’s this.

Paul Craig Roberts: Greek Government May Be Assassinated If They Pivot East (KWN)

The Greek people and the Greek government have before them the unique opportunity to prevent World War III. All the Greek government needs to do, if the Greek people will get behind the government, is to default on the loans, resign from the EU and from NATO, and accept the deal that the Russians have offered them This would begin the unraveling of NATO. Very quickly Spain and Italy would follow. So southern Europe would desert NATO and so would Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic. NATO is the mechanism that Washington uses to cause conflict with Russia. So as the EU and NATO unravel, the ability of Washington to produce this conflict disappears. The Greek government understands that what is being imposed on Greece is not workable.

Since the (implementation of) austerity the Greek economy has declined by 27%. That’s a depression. And they keep hoping that the Germans wake up one day and realize that austerity is not the way you cure debt, and that the Greek government cannot agree to conditions that drive the Greek population into the ground. They (the troika) are talking about (a) genocide (of the Greek population). The Russians understand that Greece is being plundered by the West and met with the leader of Greece and offered him a deal. They said: “We’ll finance you. But not to pay off the German and Dutch banks, the New York hedge funds or the IMF”. [..]

The troika has no interest in the facts of the matter. They have another agenda that we already discussed. And the Greek government has to see that there is no interest on the part of the troika to resolve the issue. That does suggest they understand that the real solution is not open to them. That they will not be permitted to leave the EU and NATO and make this deal with the Russians. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have simply been told, ‘You can make a good show of it, but if you leave (the EU,) you are dead.’

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Don’t think this is Jim’s strongest field.

There Will Be No “Grexit” (Jim Rickards)

Let me spend a minute on what I call the game theoretic approach. It will show why this scenario is unlikely. Europe would like to tell Greece to just put up or shut up. And Greece would like to tell Europe that they’re not going to put up with any more austerity. But what you have to do is you have to think two or three moves ahead. You have to say, “What would that actually mean? How will that actually play out? If one side acts that way, what does it mean for their constituency? Or other people — will the rest of the European Union or, for that matter, Austrian, Dutch, or German citizens be on the receiving end of any bad consequences?” Some analysts claim “Greece leaving the euro is no big deal.” I couldn’t disagree more.

Think of such a situation three steps ahead from the Institutions’ perspective. It is true that Greece is not a big part of the world economy. It is true that if Greece’s GDP disappeared, that, by itself, it wouldn’t make that large of an impact on the world. But that’s not the danger. The danger is contagion. The danger is that dominos that start falling. Going back to 2007, 2008, I remember when JPMorgan rescued Bear Stearns in March 2008. Everyone said, “The crisis is over.” Then Fannie and Freddie were rescued in July of 2008, and everybody said, “The crisis is over.” And I kept looking at the situation and saying, “This crisis is not over. These are dominoes that are falling. Each one’s hitting the next one and taking the crisis further. We don’t have resolution.”

As I expected, Lehman Brothers was next, and then AIG behind that. Then we saw how bad things got between October of 2008 and the stock market bottom in March 2009 when investors lost 30 to 50 percent of their net worth on that market decline. Not just stocks, but real estate and other assets across the board. So I see these dominos falling if Greece goes. It’s not about Greece — it’s about Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland. It’s about the whole eurozone. It’s about confidence. That doesn’t mean that if Greece quits the euro, that the next day Italy says, “Oh, we’re quitting too.” I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is that markets will do the job for them.

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“This artificial construct foisted on a European public by a political elite far less idealistic than it pretended is wearing out its welcome.”

Greece Will Survive, But Will The Euro Or The EU? (MarketWatch)

Whatever happens with the bailout talks, the one certain thing is that Greece will survive, in or outside the eurozone. One of the most beautiful countries in the world in an incredibly strategic location, it will remain a world-class tourist destination and a sought-after ally. In the past century alone, the country has survived Nazi occupation, civil war, military dictatorship, and decades of a political class riven with corruption. It will survive European Union’s austerity policies, or Grexit, or default. So don’t cry for Greece — the country has been there for millennia and it’s not going anywhere. What is far less certain is whether the euro and the EU will survive. This artificial construct foisted on a European public by a political elite far less idealistic than it pretended is wearing out its welcome.

With its bloated and corrupt bureaucracy in Brussels, the craven submission of its political leaders to a dominant reunified Germany, its increasingly obvious disrespect for democratic principles, the EU has strayed far from the founders’ concept of a free-trade zone designed to contain a defeated Germany. It is not just about Greece — or Portugal, which MarketWatch columnist Matthew Lynn identified as the next country to fall, or Spain, or Italy — but about the whole concept of political and economic integration across the entire continent, the so-called “European project.” It is difficult to see how Britain can retreat from David Cameron’s rejection of the “ever closer union” enshrined in the EU treaties as he seeks to renegotiate the terms of his country’s membership.

And without this goal — or without Britain — how can the EU hope for anything but sliding back into a loose trade confederation? The British are so done with the EU, as the Greek debacle confirms all their worst fears about the ever closer union and the joint currency. Last week, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont celebrated his decision in 1991 to opt out of the euro in an op-ed titled “The euro was doomed from the start.” “The creation of the euro has been an error of historic dimensions and done great harm to the EU,” Lamont wrote in The Telegraph. The early decades of European integration helped bring prosperity to Europe, Lamont continued, as rich and poor countries alike benefited from lower tariffs and increased internal trade.

“Britain is extremely fortunate that it is not at the ‘heart of Europe,’” this Conservative politician wrote, “but it still needs a real, robust renegotiation to make sure it is protected against Europe’s dangerous dreams and visions.” Telegraph columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, a longtime opponent of monetary union, was even less measured in his comments on the bullying tactics employed against Greece by the EU, the ECB and the IMF. “Rarely in modern times have we witnessed such a display of petulance and bad judgment by those supposed to be in charge of global financial stability, and by those who set the tone for the Western world,” he railed in a column last week.

He took particular umbrage at the report from the Greek central bank — a component after all of the European System of Central Banks — that undermined the government’s negotiating position by warning that failure to reach a deal could lead to an “uncontrollable crisis.” The report, as it no doubt was intended to do, drove capital flight out of Greece to a new level, an unconscionable act of sabotage, Evans-Pritchard felt, by an institution that is supposed to be a “guardian of financial stability.” “If we want to date the moment when the Atlantic liberal order lost its authority — and when the European Project ceased to be a motivating historic force — this may well be it,” he concluded.

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The new normal doesn’t look very solid. If the recovery must be borrowed, then where are we?

Euro-Area Bank Lending Grows at Fastest Pace Since February 2012 (Bloomberg)

Euro-area banks expanded lending at the fastest pace in more than three years in a sign that credit is starting to support the region’s recovery. Bank loans to companies and households increased 0.5% in May from a year earlier, the most since February 2012, ECB data showed on Friday. Loans posted annual declines every month from May 2012 until February 2015. The ECB has deployed a range of unconventional tools to promote lending, including targeted long-term loans to banks and government-bond purchases that cut market borrowing costs. After deleveraging since the financial crisis, banks are showing an increasing appetite for supplying credit to the region’s fragile recovery.

“The lending aggregates to the real economy still have ample scope to improve in the months ahead, so financial conditions should support growth,” said Colin Bermingham, an economist at BNP Paribas SA in London. In June, euro-area banks took up almost €74 billion of targeted central-bank loans, known as TLTROs, that they can access if they increase lending to companies and households. Since the start of the program last year, the ECB has handed out €384 billion in total. The ECB’s measures have contributed to “more favorable borrowing conditions for firms and households,” ECB President Mario Draghi said in a press conference on June 3. “The effects of these measures are working their way through to the economy and are contributing to economic growth, a reduction in economic slack, and money and credit expansion.”

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Monday will be interesting.

China Politburo Opines On Market Crash: “Black Friday Massacre” (Zero Hedge)

[..] as Xinhua reports (via Google Translate): Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets plunged more than 7% today fall 4200, over 1500 stocks daily limit. Will this “roller coaster” market stop there? Will history continue to repeat itself? How much further will it fall after the massacre on the A-share stock market day and after. In this rampant speculation, full of legends of the stock market wealth, wealth and opportunities and risks coexist forever; while everyone wants to share the wealth with this situation in the stock market to make a profit, we hope investors can have more risk awareness!

Local analysts are much more concerned… “It’s a do-or-die moment for all investors,” said Dong Jun, a Shanghai-based hedge fund manager. “If retail investors become skittish now, panic selling will continue next week.” “I think this is a very dangerous moment,” says Anne Stevenson-Yang of J Capital Research, the Beijing-based research firm. She’s right. Not only are there the technical liquidity factors she cites, but anything could further rock confidence. “The tide is going to go out, and there’s going to be a lot of people without their swimming trunks on,” Ewen Cameron Watt, chief investment strategist at BlackRock — which oversees $4.8 trillion as the world’s biggest money manager — said in an interview on Bloomberg Television in London. “We’re seeing it deflating quite rapidly.”

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Unofficially, it has done nothing else.

For The First Time Ever, QE Has Officially Failed (Zero Hedge)

Over two years ago in “Desperately Seeking $11.2 Trillion In Collateral”, Zero Hedge first warned that as a result of relentless central bank monetization of debt, liquidity in bond markets would decline at an ever faster pace even as, paradoxically, these same central banks added “phantom liquidity” (the topic of another post from two years ago) to equity markets in their attempt to artificially inflate stock prices to record levels without fundamental justification. Sure enough, with the usual 2-5 year delay, in 2015 the primary financial topic sweeping the mainstream financial media and all the “serious” pundits, is the collapse in bond market liquidity. Some, the more naive ones, blame regulation.

Others, such as iconic Citigroup credit strategist Matt King strategist explained – once again – that Dodd Frank is a negligible reason for the total plunge in bond market liquidity which is the result of, just as we warned, central bank intervention and the relentless ascent of algorithmic trading. But even as everyone is finally arguing about the cause of the plunging bond market liquidity and has no clue how to resolve this biggest nightmare for what once used to be the deepest and most liquidity of markets (at least not without forcing central banks to sell the trillions in bonds they hold, a step which would free up collateral but also result in the biggest market crash ever), a far more ominous question has reappeared. One which, as usual, we asked nearly three years ago: what happens when central banks soak up too much liquidity.

Our answer, at that point, QE will have officially failed, because instead of lowering bond yields – which as a reminder is the primary QE transmission mechanism, one which forces investor to reach not only for yield but also for risk in other asset classes such as equities – any incremental bond purchases will start raising yields as the adverse impact from the illiquidity “premium” surpasses the price appreciation benefit from frontrun central bank buying. Impossible, you say? Not only not impossible but in one country it just happened. Sweden, and as Bloomberg sarcastically notes, “It’s probably not what the Riksbank expected.”

What is “it”? Precisely what we said would happen three years ago: Quantitative easing is supposed to drive down longer-dated yields. But as investors obsess over market depth, the Riksbank’s bond purchases are undermining liquidity and driving Swedish yields higher. The financial conditions — the currency and the bond yields — are moving in the wrong direction,” Roger Josefsson, chief economist at Danske Bank A/S in Stockholm, said by phone. The assumption is that “the Riksbank wants yields to go down and the krona to weaken, but it’s been the opposite direction recently. That should pose a problem.”

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This should be a huge, widespread project all over Europe. Greece and Italy!

Dutch City Utrecht To Try Out Universal, Unconditional ‘Basic Income’ (Ind.)

The Dutch city of Utrecht will start an experiment which hopes to determine whether society works effectively with universal, unconditional income introduced. The city has paired up with the local university to establish whether the concept of ‘basic income’ can work in real life, and plans to begin the experiment at the end of the summer holidays. Basic income is a universal, unconditional form of payment to individuals, which covers their living costs. The concept is to allow people to choose to work more flexible hours in a less regimented society, allowing more time for care, volunteering and study. University College Utrecht has paired with the city to place people on welfare on a living income, to see if a system of welfare without requirements will be successful.

The Netherlands as a country is no stranger to less traditional work environments – it has the highest proportion of part time workers in the EU, 46.1%. However, Utrecht’s experiment with welfare is expected to be the first of its kind in the country. Alderman for Work and Income Victor Everhardt told DeStad Utrecht: “One group is will have compensation and consideration for an allowance, another group with a basic income without rules and of course a control group which adhere to the current rules.” “Our data shows that less than 1.5% abuse the welfare, but, before we get into all kinds of principled debate about whether we should or should not enter, we need to first examine if basic income even really works. ”

What happens if someone gets a monthly amount without rules and controls? Will someone be sitting passively at home or do people develop themselves and provide a meaningful contribution to our society?” The city is also planning to talk to other municipalities about setting up similar experiments, including Nijmegen, Wageningen, Tilburg and Groningen, awaiting permission from The Hague in order to do so.

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Don’t believe the hype.

Half Of Europe’s Electricity Set To Be From Renewables By 2030 (Guardian)

Europe will likely get more than half of its electricity from renewable sources by the end of the next decade if EU countries meet their climate pledges, according to a draft commission paper. A planned overhaul of the continent’s electricity grids will now need to be sped up, says the leaked text, seen by the Guardian. “Reaching the European Union 2030 energy and climate objectives means the share of renewables is likely to reach 50% of installed electricity capacity,” says the consultation paper, due to be published on 15 July. “This means that changes to the electricity system in favour of decarbonisation will have to come even faster.”

The EU has set itself a goal of cutting emissions 40% on 1990 levels by 2030, and an aspiration for a 27% share for renewables across Europe’s full energy mix, which includes sectors such as transport, agriculture and buildings that do not necessarily rely on electricity. Around a quarter of Europe’s electricity currently comes from renewable sources. Oliver Joy, a spokesman for the European Wind Energy Association welcomed the draft text but noted the 27% goal for 2030 was non-binding, and some countries were looking likely to even miss an earlier goal, for 2020, that is binding. “Even with a binding provision, we are seeing the Netherlands, UK and France potentially missing their 2020 target [to source a fifth of energy provision from renewables].”

Joy called for the commission to deliver a governance system for renewables that prevented slacker states from hiding behind the more fast-moving ones. Downing Street would almost certainly resist more stringent oversight from Brussels on renewable energy. Other measures put up for discussion in the paper could be an anathema to the government’s eurosceptic backbenchers.

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