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Author: paulm100m
Anything Goes
In the immortal words of Cole Porter, “Anything Goes” in the international financial world these days. And while we are not yet again in the giddy 1920′s leading up to an even giddier depression, we are getting damned close!
The recent financial management fiasco in Cyprus are very real proof that the international sector hasn’t a clue; from the small-minded reporters who rub their hands in glee that yet another “irresponsible’ national economy has bitten the dust, to the so-called national Finance Ministers who gloat that other irresponsible countries will suffer the same fate as the Cypriots and Russian “oligarchs” (why please, are all rich Russians “oligarchs”?).
It doesn’t seem to occur to any of these so-called fiscal experts that that they have abruptly and completely ripped the guts out of the banking sector across the Western world. Given that the entire international financial sector is based on sleight of hand and “confidence’ that things can only get better; we now are all in deep shit. One’s confidence may become a little shaky when you realise that once things go bad (because things have gone bad somewhere else -like Greece), you are going to immediately lose almost half of your savings. But lets not forget the small Cypriot savers who now are unlikely to ever be able to retrieve their measly savings, and without a job, may simply starve, as the inexorable decline of the Cypriot economy gathers pace.
But what is your alternative to the bank?-stuffing your money under the mattress?, or in your little safe in the mattress? (recently invented by an imaginative businessman from Spain)- no – inflation is definitely going to make that a pretty poor option-assuming you don’t get robbed first.
Others see their saviour in Bitcoin, suppliers for whom have just announced the first bitcoin ATM in – guess where? -Nicosia,Cyprus. Lets hope the internet keeps working then…
Undoubtedly the Cyprus economy is minuscle in comparison with other EU economies, but for some reason their Northern EU neighbours have taken upon themselves to scapegoat Cypriots, presumably not realising the mammoth impacts of their actions upon themselves and the rest of the Western world.
But then really-why am I surprised?; the basis of capitalism is short-sighted greed and folly- why should it be different this time?
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Postscript:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n09/james-meek/the-depositor-haircut
Economonitor: Cyprus Reopens for Business: NowWhat?
http://www.economonitor.com/blog/2013/03/cyprus-reopens-for-business-now-what/
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The BRICS Expose the West’s Hypocrisy By William Pesek
Who do they think they are, these upstart economies, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa?
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Betray Your Bank Before Your Bank Betrays You
What’s a Slovenian with several hundred thousand euros in the bank supposed to do? Spread it out among at least a few different banks, that’s what. Or move the money out of the country, while it’s still possible.
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Cyprus: We apologise for any inconvenience…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21965059
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The Syrian Connection
France and the UK are pressing the EU for approval to directly arm the Syrian rebels, and for now, are being rebuffed by fellow EU members. The reality is that France (ex-coloniser of Syria and Lebanon) and the UK have been arming and supporting the rebels since the war’s inception via their “intelligence” departments; either directly via “discreet” arms shipments into Turkey and Jordan by air , or indirectly, via weapons bought and shipped through the hereditary (Sunni) dictatorships in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with the CIA also mounting extensive weapons distribution and training programmes inside Turkey and now Jordan.
Why then the EU request for direct military assistance of the rebels?. By committing the formal military networks that the various EU countries possess, into the war, Britain and France will be able to seamlessly pull in the other European countries into an ongoing military occupation of Syria/Lebanon to combat the extremist risks they have done so much to create. This will create yet another combat zone where civilians will have to subsist in a land without the necessary infrastructure of adequate food water and sewage systems to survive-another Palestine, Libya or Afghanistan in other words. By doing so, it will deprive the Iranians of one more of their state allies in the region and one less supporter of a Palestinian state. This will however also inevitably lead the two Shi-ite governments of Iraq and Iran into closer alliance.
Israel, with its rascist government in some dissaray, is wavering in its support of the rebels; havering between the risks of having Salafists on its borders and having an opportunity to remove one more of its arch-enemies who dares to block its advance into, and occupation of, “Greater Israel”.
On the other side, Russia is carefully supporting the Assad regime with “top-up” armaments and training, and giving moral and tactical support through its Mediterranean naval exercises out of the Russian Tartus naval base on the Syrian coast. Similarly Iran appears to be using its informal military network ; the Iran Revolutionary Guard or ‘Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution’ (IRGC), with the likely support of Hezbollah, to supply and train the paramilitary and Shi-ite/Alawite units supporting Assad. For now, China appears to be offering moral, but not much else, support to the Assad regime. This is unlikely to change.
Iraq’s Shi-ite government is also very keen to ensure that the Salafist groups (affiliated or not to Al Qaeda) supported by Qatar and Saudia Arabia, (and rather more directly by the Western powers than they would care to admit), do not gain a long-term foothold in Syria with unimpeded transport lines to the Arabian peninsula and Turkey from the Mediterranean and the Muslim entities of the former Soviet Union; thereby significantly improving their strategic position in Iraq.
As always, the Western powers are attempting a divide and rule approach; using their long term hereditary dictatorship Sunni allies of Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Qatar to offset the growing influence and power of the Iranians, and the Shi-ite disaster they created for themselves in Iraq. The risks of blowback this time however are even more enormous. The growing salafist influence in the Turkish border region and beyond, the growing power of the Kurds straddling so many different ‘middle east’ countries, the potential for a massive upswing in Sunni versus Shite violence in Iraq, let alone the potential overthrow of the current Iranian theo-demo-cracy with something unknown and likely more radical, has the potential to lead to the establishment of a real Salafist caliphate in the region; with all its violent, expansionist medieval and misogynist cultural impacts, and a real “clash of civilizations” with the West.
Such would be the delight of the neo-conservatives!
And just to make things slightly more complex!- it would appear the power balance is swinging-as the current desperate gas shortage in freezing temperatures in the UK demonstrates. The oil/gas-rich Sunni dictatorships are acquiring considerably more leverage in cash-strapped Western states then ever before, even while their own societies implode.
Postscripts:
Read Moon of Alabama’s current relatively considered take on the Syrian situation here
Or Tony Cartalucci’s more radical view of the weapons shipments issues here calledCONFIRMED: US Shipping Weapons to Syria – Al Nusra’s “Mystery” Sponsors Revealed
Or Henry Precht at Lobe Log’s “Syrias civil war and its unintended consequences”
http://www.lobelog.com/syrias-civil-war-and-its-unintended-consequences/
We are all Immigrants
This post is prompted by a comment on Facebook saying (paraphrasing); those who are truly English or Scottish should stop allowing new immigrants into “our” country (the UK).
I am reminded that I too am an immigrant,; some of my family immigrated to these southern isles from far-off England and Scotland more than 150 years ago, but I am in native Maori terms, still not tangata whenua (people of the land).
Should we all then return to our “homelands”, wherever they may be? My guess is that there would be none of the current population of people living in the United Kingdom , much of Europe and almost none in the United States if that was the case. The reality is that homo sapiens have always been wanderers, moving from place to place, from continent to continent, island to island, since we first walked on our hind legs.
These borders that define the countries of the world, the pretty colours on the globe of the world, are simply fictional; defined for those who need to collect taxes, define what is “right” and “proper”, or control others in so many ingenious ways.
Don’t get me wrong, any Illuminati, Bilderberg Group , or other global world conspiracies, real or otherwise, are fortunately doomed to fail. The incompetence, venality and sheer stupidity of those who attempt ultimate power is a salutary lesson to the species.
But, when it comes down to it; we are all just visitors on this little blue ball. Lets all look after it-together.
THE BEES BAD KNEES
In the last few years, New Zealand has seen a massive decline in honey bees. In my little garden in summer a few years ago, when all the flowers would be at their peak, there would be many more honey bees than bumblebees and german wasps; but no longer. This year the number of honey bees I sighted all summer, I could count on two hands.
“Uncontaminated ” research- ie not funded by chemical companies, has established clear correlations between CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) and pesticides called neonicotinoids; chemically similar to nicotine . The most common of these is a pesticide called imidacloprid. Two others are clothianidin and thiamethoxam.
However the correlations are not precise; it appears to require cumulative poisoning over months and perhaps years for the effects of the neonicotinoids to wreak their havoc on bees. And as with other poisoning effects , the impacts on the bees may lead to a lack of resistance to other diseases which can not be directly attributable to the neonicotinoids. The EU has recommended a two year ban on the use of neonicotinoids in specific circumstances, but that may go nowhere to identify or address the issues of CCD. Nature is by definition messy and complex, while man’s actions are linear and relatively unsophisticated. We may not be absolutely sure of the correlations-yet the results are very very clear and disastrous for us all.
As Jill Richardson, in her How We Could Prevent Massive Bee Deaths and Save Our Food article notes at Alternet, Although there’s little private citizens can do, beyond submitting comments to the EPA about these pesticides, contacting your representatives, and perhaps even getting your own beehive, you might be surprised to find out that these toxic pesticides are widely available for home use. Bayer sells imidacloprid in products sold for use on roses, flowers, shrubs, trees (even fruit and nut trees!), and lawns. Even the flea treatment Advantage sold for your pet contains it!
Once again we see the power of corporates to distort research, government agency decision-making, and the truth; even while knowing that the results of their actions are environmentally disastrous for us all.
Repeatedly, throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, we have seen the power of money over-ride the intrinsic value and beauty of this world’s environment,. our co-habiting species and even homo sapiens’ wellbeing. Like the cumulative destructive power of neonicotinoids, we are seeing the cumulative destruction of our planet for corporate greed beginning to descend on us at ever-increasing speed.
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Postscript:
Read a further article on Activist Post by Heather Callaghan entitled, ‘Noid Rage & Angry Birds: EPA Sued over Declining Bees, Called on to Stop Bird Deaths
A coalition of interest groups, activists and beekeepers took the issue into their own hands on Thursday to slash the use of bee-killing pesticides in an effort to protect them and the future of food. Pesticide Action Network (PAN), Center for Food Safety, Beyond Pesticides and four beekeepers are among the team who want bees safe from the chemicals that include clothianidin and thiamethoxam. Even if it takes suing the government. How are they able to bring a case against the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) for this problem?
Postscript:
A further article on this issue by By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC World Service entitled Neonicotinoid pesticides ‘damage brains of bees’ or http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21958547 ,which beautifully articulates the hypocrisy and deliberate attempts to obfuscate by the chemical sellers.
5 Astonishing Facts About Bee-killing Systemic Pesticides
Kill Anything That Moves: Vietnam and beyond
Peter van Buren of the Huffington Post reviews Nick Turse’s latest book Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam
Sadly, van Buren’s parting lines are not about the millions of tortured, raped, and murdered civilians of that trail of “dark skinned’ countries the US has invaded over the past 50 years; it is commiseration for those few hundred thousand US soldiers who have been put in “impossible” environments by those in the “highest seats of power”.
As van Buren notes: The issue is not so much how/when/should we assign blame and punishment to an individual soldier, but to raise the stakes and ask: why have we not assigned blame and demanded punishment for the leaders who put those 19-year-old soldiers into the impossible situations they faced? Before we throw away the life of a kid who shot when he should not have done so, why don’t we demand justice for those in the highest seats of power for creating wars that create such fertile ground for atrocity? The chain of responsibility for the legacy left behind in our wars runs high.
Every one of those soldiers had the opportunity to refuse to fight; every one of those soldiers had the opportunity to refuse to commit atrocities- but failed to do so. The responsibilities for murder and massacre run at all levels of our white-skinned colonial societies. The assumptions of superiority, of “rightness” and ultimately simply pure racism, are endemic at every level of Western society. They are our sins which cannot be absolved, and for which we are likely to pay dearly once the tables are turned in another decade or two, when western economies will no longer rule the world and determine the ‘game’.
Even now, almost forty years after the end of the Vietnam war, the US government and most of it’s citizens, refuse to acknowledge the massive war crimes of at least a million Vietnamese deaths carried out by the US in the name of rolling back a fictional red tide of asian dominos, through carpet bombing, chemical warfare and systemic atrocity after atrocity.
It is time for all countries to acknowledge that for us all to live peaceful fulfilled lives on a sustainable planet, that we have no rights to control other human beings to behave in the way we think they “should” behave through force-nor indeed any rights of force over any other species on this planet.
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Postscript:
40 years on, Laotians tell of US war legacy By MATTHEW PENNINGTON | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Forty years after the secret U.S. bombing that devastated Laos, heirs to the war’s deadly legacy of undetonated explosives are touring America to prod the conscience of the world’s most powerful nation for more help to clear up the mess.
Note the casual throwaway line ” The U.S. dropped 2 million tons of bombs on Laos over a nine-year period up to 1973 — more than on Germany and Japan during World War II.”
http://www.alternet.org/investigations/executive-branch-evil-and-lawless
Executive Branch leaders have killed, wounded and made homeless well over 20 million human beings in the last 50 years, mostly civilians.
June 26, 2013 |
America has a secret. It is not discussed in polite company or at the dinner tables of the powerful, rich and famous.
New Antarctica 