WikiLeaks – The Truth About The Rape Charges

December 18, 2010 · Posted in Foreign Policy · Comment

Tags: julien assange, wikileaks

Arab Opinion Polls: US and Isreaeli Governments Pose the Biggest Threats to the Middle East

December 1, 2010 · Posted in Foreign Policy · Comment

The predictable hypocrisy about WikiLeaks on the part of US neoconservatives is as pathetic as it is hilarious:

Noam Chomsky is always a great resource on objective evidence, logic, and facts in the realm of foreign policy.

Tags: noam chomsky, wikileaks

AntiWar Discussion – The Liberty Solution

November 23, 2010 · Posted in Foreign Policy · Comment

To be anti-war is to be anti-government. To be anti-government is to be anti-war. There is no way around that simple equation. So don’t fight it. :)

Tags: war

Iraq War Crimes Surface; Probably Greatest War-Leak in Military History

October 22, 2010 · Posted in Foreign Policy · Comment

Well, war is always a crime, so the headline wouldn’t really surprise anybody at this point I’m sure. I love this tweet on wikileaks’ twitter page:

Pentagon says it expects ‘nothing new’ in next Wikileaks dump. ‘Nothing new’ to THEM goes without saying.

So true!

Here’s the site:

At 5pm EST Friday 22nd October 2010 WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history. The 391,832 reports (’The Iraq War Logs’), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a ‘SIGACT’ or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.

The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 ‘civilians’; 23,984 ‘enemy’ (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 ‘host nation’ (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 ‘friendly’ (coalition forces). The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60%) of these are civilian deaths.That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period. For comparison, the ‘Afghan War Diaries’, previously released by WikiLeaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20,000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivallent population size.

Please donate to WikiLeaks at https://donations.datacell.com/ to defend this information.

Here’s the Democracy Now clip:

“Blood on the hands of Wikileaks” … says a military general. Excuse me, but YOU HAVE GOT TO BE F*****G KIDDING.

Tags: war, wikileaks

Iraq – Mission Accomplished

August 28, 2010 · Posted in Foreign Policy · 2 Comments

Seven years of US led genocide have truly wrecked yet another nation. As a premonition of what’s to come, Iraqi insurgents launched a broad series of attacks on August 25th.

Let’s not forget to thank president Bush and the US Congress for this hideous accomplishment. Let’s also not forget to thank President Obama for keeping US forces stationed in this hell hole …

From JustForeignPolicy.org:

Sign the petition telling Congress that about a million Iraqis have likely been killed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Help us expose to Congress the true costs of war.

A study, published in prestigious medical journal The Lancet, estimated that over 600,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the invasion as of July 2006. Iraqis have continued to be killed since then. The death counter provides a rough daily update of this number based on a rate of increase derived from the Iraq Body Count. (See the complete explanation.)

The estimate that over a million Iraqis have died received independent confirmation from a prestigious British polling agency in September 2007. Opinion Research Business estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed violently since the US-led invasion.

This devastating human toll demands greater recognition. It eclipses the Rwandan genocide and our leaders are directly responsible. Little wonder they do not publicly cite it. You can use the simple HTML code above to post the counter to your website to help spread the word.

Add your name to the petition telling Congress that about a million Iraqis have likely been killed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Help us continue this important work with a tax-deductible contribution.

See the list of some folks we know have posted the counter.

I will say it again as I have many times … War is a Racket – Made by Government.

Tags: iraq, iraq war, war

True Heroism Takes Courage

June 2, 2010 · Posted in Foreign Policy · 2 Comments

After getting impoverished, brainwashed and/or bullied into the murderous cult that is the military, most people get stuck for the rest of their lives and take their families with them. It takes an incredible amount of courage and self searching to do what this fellow did.

On Memorial Day, I do not salute the paid hitmen in green costumes who are killing other humans overseas right now, just because somebody told them to.

I salute those who have been able to see through all the propagandistic and conformist fog blown their way, those who understand the injustice in what they did and who come forth to speak the truth like this veteran. He is a true hero.

Tags: war

Glenn Greenwald Calls Out Israel’s War Crimes …

June 1, 2010 · Posted in Foreign Policy · Comment

Tags: gaza, israel

Greek Bailout – Who Is Really Getting Rescued?

May 2, 2010 · Posted in Foreign Policy · Comment

As events unravel in Europe, one might want to ask himself why nobody suggested that those who loaned money to Greece simply work out debt settlements on their own, and take responsibility for the financial risk they took with their loans.

Of course, in a world where individual accountability, free markets, and consistency are a such completely weird and laughable ideas to people, such a thing is unthinkable! :)

Who is it that ultimately benefits from this and all future Greek rescue packages? This post has some helpful information:

German financial institutions may have the third-largest exposure to Greece but are set to ride out the storm as long as the country’s fiscal crisis does not spread outside its borders, analysts said.

Lenders to public-sector borrowers — such as Commerzbank unit Eurohypo and Hypo Real Estate — as well as some landesbanks have billions of euros in exposure.

German creditors have a combined $43 billion outstanding with Greek borrowers, behind only French and Swiss lenders with $75 billion and $64 billion, respectively, data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) show.

Greece owes $302 billion to all foreign lenders, the most recent figures from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) show — half the debt Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers had when it collapsed, which triggered massive writedowns as the value of banks’ assets plummeted.

Germans and other European citizens who will be footing this bill should be aware of this: Ultimately the rescue for Greece is nothing but another free ride for the banks who have already been bailed out on behalf of the hapless taxpayers.

The article also points out something else:

Greece’s economy is smaller than that in the southern German state of Bavaria and its banking system does not play a large international role. German exposure to Spain, in contrast, is six times bigger than lending to Greek borrowers.

“If the Spaniards get into trouble then the fallout from the Lehmann collapse will look like peanuts,” said one analyst who asked not to be named.

Aaah yes … the next disaster to look forward to :)

Tags: bailout, greece, greek creditors

Greece’s “Tough” Concessions

May 2, 2010 · Posted in Foreign Policy · Comment

As expected, the Greek bailout package has been finalized and announced. German taxpayers will be footing the biggest portion, about $25 billion, of the $110 billion Euro package.

You will hear people talk tough about how stringent requirements have been put on Greece in order to get the money.

Just so you get an idea of the level of “tough” measures that are being debated here, the German news magazine Speigel has a list of cuts that the Greek prime minister has agreed to (I will translate here):

An 8% cut on public sector salaries

Elimination of the 13th and 14th month salaries for public sector employees

A freeze in public sector hiring

An 8% cut on public sector benefits

Lifting the number of employment years required for eligibility for full public sector pensions from 37 to 40

Elimination of the Christmas bonus and the 14th month pension

A hike in the value added tax from 21% to 23%

New taxes on tobacco and alcohol

A lifting of restrictions on layoffs in the private sector

I mean, doesn’t this stuff just blow the mind?? Greek public sector unions are taking to the streets and burning cars over an elimination of something like “13th and 14th month salaries”, “fully guaranteed pension eligibility after now still 40 (!!!) instead of previously 37 (!!!) years”, an elimination of the “14th month pension payment” (while of course still keeping the 13th month one).

On top of that, Greek taxpayers are being asked to foot the bill for the remaining gap via the broadest possible tax hikes.

These are all things that should never have existed in the first place. These are not concessions, they are a move from mind-blowing, sick, vile lunacy to still complete madness!

And to take to the streets over this kind of stuff? What do you think is going to happen once these plans, too, prove completely unsustainable and everyone acts surprised and rushes back to the table?

What a mess!

Tags: greece, greek bailout, greek concessions, greek public sector pensions

Europe’s Inevitable Plight

May 1, 2010 · Posted in Foreign Policy · Comment

Europe vs America

The failing and fundamentally flawed project called the European Union continues its slow, yet unstoppable, slide toward mad grandeur, imperialism, tyranny, collectivism, and fiscal chaos.

It is now coming to a minor clash between citizens within the individual European countries, and the governments who exploit them on behalf of the EU.

I do not believe that the European Union will get that same kind of free ride that the the growing central US government has enjoyed over the past two centuries. On the contrary, I expect opposition and healthy cynicism toward this ongoing centralization to grow incrementally. In particular the Eastern European nations have had their instructive lessons when it comes to becoming protectorates of an imperialistic and tyrannical force.

The US has had, over the centuries, the advantage of having a large part of public opinion behind the idea of a close union of American states (finding symbolic manifestation and direction in the War of Northern Aggression), an important factor when it came to enabling its central government to grow without major limitations in its way ever since.

This is not so much the case with Europe, at least not yet.

Many people in European countries are rather reluctantly moving along with the developments toward a more centralized union. I remember, growing up in Berlin, when politicians aspiring offices within the European government started the first campaigns for European parliament. People had no way of assigning any relevance to these efforts. What did we care for some guy asking us for his vote so he can pursue a career in Brussels? The detachment of European citizens from the European political process is completely justified.

So long as it didn’t affect Europeans fundamentally in their lives, they sort of acquiesced with this process. Now this is changing. People are beginning to notice that their own hard earned money is on the line to subsidize corruption in other member countries. This sentiment did flare up several times over the past decades, but never came to a culmination in the way that it is now. Populist right wing parties, whom I obviously have no sympathy for in general, have really been the only ones consistently pointing out these problems. So long as mainstream parties don’t pick up on this, I expect the popularity of such extremists to grow over the next 5-10 years.

Fiscal Discipline?

It is also noteworthy that in the US, individual states (except Vermont) are, by and large, required to balance their budgets:

All the states except Vermont have a legal requirement of a balanced budget. Some are constitutional, some are statutory, and some have been derived by judicial decision from constitutional provisions about state indebtedness that do not, on their face, call for a balanced budget. The General Accounting Office has commented that “some balanced budget requirements are based on interpretations of state constitutions and statutes rather than on an explicit statement that the state must have a balanced budget.”

I would be the last to claim that the US states are a beacon of fiscal responsibility. Many deficits are hidden in the form of substantial public sector pension plans. But as a tendency, existing restrictions provide for fewer frictions between member states.

Such provisions don’t exist in European countries. What does exist is a completely clawless tiger called the “Stability Treaty”. What it basically says is this: “It would be nice if you governments could try not to exceed a budget deficit of 3% of GDP. If you do, we’ll give you a big and instructive wag of the finger!”

This treaty is now, more than ever, null and void, but nobody likes to talk about it. The fact of the matter is that if you violate the treaty you won’t even get a wag of the finger, but you’ll be rewarded with more money! As I said over a year ago:

The 3% ceiling won’t matter anymore from hereon. Consider the European stability treaty dead. One member state after another will violate the requirements. The fact that a bailout of some Euro states by others is discussed, just shows how torn this European Union really is, how severe its imbalances are. With discrepancies like these, it is completely unfeasible to maintain a currency union. The Euro will keep taking its beating for it.

And it is precisely this which is currently stirring up the debate within Europe.

Why Do We Have to Pay?

The head of the ECB visited Berlin as Germans oppose the Greek bailout:

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet is on a diplomatic mission to Berlin as Germany’s reluctance to bail out Greece helps fan a fiscal crisis now burning around the euro region’s periphery.

Trichet and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn will brief German parliamentary leaders in Berlin around noon today about the $60 billion aid package for Greece, which has met with opposition in Europe’s biggest economy. The joint European Union-IMF package would require Germany to stump up the biggest individual loan to Greece.

“It’s a sales pitch in front of an audience that needs it,” said Jacques Cailloux, chief European economist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London. “The lawmakers probably need it spelled out that this is not about financing luxury pensions in Greece. Not helping Greece will unfortunately have a direct impact on the euro-area economy and German jobs.”

Standard & Poor’s yesterday cut Greece’s credit rating to junk status and slashed Portugal’s two notches, intensifying a bond market sell-off across the southern euro region amid concern that debt-ridden countries will struggle to refinance their loans. The crisis has highlighted the absence of a common fiscal policy to cement Europe’s monetary union, frustrating Trichet’s efforts to promote a “common destiny” for its 16 members.

‘Why do we have to pay?’

“Why do we have to pay for Greece’s luxury pensions?” Germany’s biggest-selling tabloid newspaper, Bild Zeitung, asked on its front page yesterday. Almost 60 percent of Germans don’t want to help Greece, Die Welt newspaper reported, citing a survey of 1,009 people.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble asked Trichet and Strauss-Kahn to speak with lawmakers to “facilitate direct insight into the actions as they stand.”

Trichet, Strauss-Kahn and Schaeuble will brief reporters on the talks at 2:30 p.m. in Berlin, a finance ministry spokeswoman said. Trichet declined to comment on the S&P downgrades yesterday.

In Greece, Prime Minister George Papandreou will speak around 8 p.m. local time at a conference entitled “Shaping the Agenda: In the face of a crisis for Greece and the EU.”

Trichet, who once called himself “Mr. Euro,” has been powerless to stop the currency’s 12 percent slide against the dollar in the past five months as politicians haggle over aid for Greece. While he presides over interest rates for the region, he has no say over how taxpayers’ money is spent.

IMF Money

Trichet’s appearance with Strauss-Kahn to promote the joint package comes less than two months after he dismissed the IMF’s financial involvement in a rescue package as inappropriate. Trichet argued that money from the fund would show Europe is incapable of solving its own crises.

“Trichet can only give his opinion,” said David Milleker, chief economist at Union Investment in Frankfurt. “The ECB can’t do anything else. It’s up to the politicians now.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing a crucial state election on May 9, which could explain some of her reluctance to write a check for Athens, said Juergen Michels, chief euro-area economist at Citigroup Inc. in London.

“We’ve never been in a situation like this before so it’s not that unusual to have national interests supersede those of the euro area,” he said.

Merkel’s Audience

Merkel drew applause from an audience in North Rhine- Westphalia this week when she said that “Greece must do its homework” before getting any aid.

The problem is the crisis is now rapidly spreading, undermining confidence in the euro and even fueling speculation it could splinter.

“The most frustrating point in all of this is that those who followed the rules must now help out those who didn’t,” Cailloux said.

Portugal, Ireland and Spain are “conspicuously vulnerable” and may need funding, former IMF chief economist and Harvard Professor Kenneth Rogoff said in an interview this week.

Euro-region members are considering holding a summit to discuss releasing aid to Greece, an official from the Spanish EU presidency, who declined to be named in line with policy, said yesterday.

In the meantime, “it’s crucial for Trichet to regain his stature by reminding lawmakers that they are all in the one boat,” said Michels.

Trichet on April 12 said the ECB wants “the governments of the euro area to live up to their responsibility.”

“Their countries share a common destiny,” he said.

Brain bending and fuzzy conceptual nonsense such as the statement from Jacques Callioux is of course completely inevitable. He is doing his job, that’s all and that’s OK. But I hope he doesn’t expect rational individuals to listen to him for a second. There is absolutely no justification for bailouts whatsoever, be it a corporation or, worse yet, a gang of people controlling police, army, and prisons, a.k.a the government.

The German government also held a special session on Greece:

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet met to debate help for Greece as Europe’s growing debt crisis tests her refusal to rush German approval of aid.

Key ministers stayed on after the weekly Cabinet session in Berlin today to discuss disbursing Germany’s 8.4 billion euro ($11 million) share of a European Union-International Monetary Fund bailout. A government spokesman declined to provide further details.

Merkel is insisting Greece commit to several years of deficit reduction as a cut in the nation’s debt rating to junk yesterday drove up borrowing costs from Italy to Portugal and Ireland and boosted indicators of corporate credit risk around the world.

Action “has to be done now, has to be done very fast,” Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Secretary General Angel Gurria said in an interview today with Bloomberg television in Berlin before he was due to meet Merkel. “It’s not a question of the danger of contagion. Contagion has already happened. This is like Ebola. When you realize you have it you have to cut your leg off in order to survive.”

European stocks slid for a second day and the cost to insure against bond losses rose. Greek two-year note yields soared to 21.4 percent. The euro traded near a one-year low against the dollar.

To counter with yet another (German) limb-metaphor (since this seems to be the intellectual level of this debate): When you extend your small finger, people will want your whole arm. This is precisely what we’ll see. Once German taxpayers are on the hook for a Greek bailout, pension recipients in Spain, Portugal, and Italy are going to get in line and we will have the same debates. This is completely inevitable.

How much is needed for Greece?

The IMF says this:

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn told German lawmakers in Berlin today that Greece may need as much as 120 billion euros ($159 billion) in aid, Green Party parliamentary spokesman Michael Schroeren said by phone today.

Our dear friends the bankers are saying this:

European policy makers may need to stump up as much as 600 billion euros ($794 billion) in aid or buy government bonds if they are to stamp out the region’s spreading fiscal crisis, said economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc.

No contagion?

European policy makers continue to play down speculation of contagion, with ECB Executive Board member Juergen Stark saying yesterday that Greece should be seen as a “unique case.” Leaders will wait until around May 10 before meeting again to discuss Greece, EU President Herman Van Rompuy said yesterday in Tokyo. He also said there was “no question” of Greece restructuring its debt.

Some economists are optimistic that market turmoil will ultimately force politicians and central bankers to do what’s necessary to rescue the euro region.

Eric Kraus, a strategist at Otkritie Financial Co. in Moscow, said he’s buying Greek bonds on the bet policy makers will eventually strike back.

“Sooner or later those morons in Brussels and Berlin will realize that they are playing with fire, have already been burned, and will have to stop feeding the flames,” said Kraus, who works at a brokerage part-owned by Russia’s second-biggest bank. “Then we should see a very nice bounce.”

Of course the ECB will say there is no contagion. And of course they are as always 100% wrong. Contagion will spread rapidly.

Irony and hypocrisy will always we so rampant and staggering in disasters such as the one above. Thus Kraus is almost right when he makes a statement like the one above. Only that the morons he is referring to are not playing with fire by not bailing out Greece, but rather by considering that very option. Also, the morons don’t only sit in Brussles and Berlin, they also sit in offices in banks in Moscow and have signs on their desks saying “Eric Kraus”.

Merkel’s language already makes it obvious: Germany will go along with the package to bailout Greece, one way or another. She will sell it as a victory to have put strict requirements on the Greek bureaucrats to pursue fiscal discipline once they have been rewarded for their past indiscipline. This is of course how incentives work in the fantasy land of government officials. On the other hand, every sane individual sees it how it is: as sheer and utter madness.

All of this is completely inevitable until people reject the fantasies of interventionism and understand the blessings of voluntaryism.

Tags: bailouts, europe, greece

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