Archive
The Countdown To The Break Up Of The Euro Has Officially Begun
Thursday, 10 May 2012
‘The tremendous backlash against the austerity approach that Germany has been pushing. All over Europe, prominent politicians and incumbent political parties are being voted out. In fact, Nicolas Sarkozy has become the 11th leader of a European nation to be defeated in an election since 2008. We have seen governments fall in the Netherlands, the UK, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Greece. Whenever they get a chance, the citizens of Europe are using the ballot box to send a message that they do not like what is going on.
It turns out that austerity is extremely unpopular. But if newly elected politicians all over Europe begin rejecting austerity, this puts Germany in a very difficult position. Should Germany be expected to indefinitely bail out all of the members of the eurozone that choose to live way beyond their means? If Germany pulled out of the euro tomorrow, the euro would absolutely collapse, bond yields for the rest of the eurozone would skyrocket to unprecedented heights, and without German bailout money troubled nations such as Greece would be headed directly for default.’
Read more: The Countdown To The Break Up Of The Euro Has Officially Begun
Greek communists receive 25,2% of votes
ATHENS, Greece – The two Greek communist parties, the Marxist-Leninist KKE and the Eurocommunist SYRIZA, have jointly won circa 22-28 percent of the votes according to exit polls. Neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn has won between 6-8 percent of votes.
The Eurocommunist SYRIZA has won between 15 and 18,5 percent of the votes, while the KKE somewhat disappointingly reached almost 7,5 to 10 percent of the votes.
The two ruling parties, who now have two thirds of parliament, have fallen to merely almost 40 percent of the votes jointly. The centre-right New Democracy has won between 17 and 20 percent of the votes (now 33,5 percent). While the now largest social capitalist PASOK has between 14 and 17 percent of the votes (now almost 44 percent).
UPDATE
The four communist parties KKE, ANTARSYA, SYRIZA, ΚΚΕ(μ-λ) jointly received 25,2%. Only the KKE and SYRIZA received enough votes to enter parliament. Other communist parties (such as the Trotskyist EEK, and anti-Russian Maoist conspiracy theorist party OAKKE) received less than 0,1 percent of the votes.
Final results:
New Democracy: 20,4%
SYRIZA: 15,6%
PASOK: 14,2%
Independent Greeks: 10,3%
KKE: 8,3%
Golden Dawn: 6,8%
DIMAR: 5,9%
Ecologists: 2,7%
LAOS: 2,8%
Dimokratiki Simmachia: 2,6%
Creation! Again: 1,9%
Action: 1,5%
…
The coalition of Trotskyists, Maoists, and Marxist-Leninists, ANTARSYA (Marxist-Leninist party): 1,1%
The Maoist ‘Communist Party of Greece (Marxist–Leninist)’: 0,2%
Cameron says Euro needs single government
LONDON (Reuters) – A successful euro zone requires a single government if it is to work properly, British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a newspaper interview on Wednesday.
“There’s nowhere in the world that has a single currency without having more of a single government,” Cameron told Britain’s Daily Mail.
“Making sense of the euro for me would mean that those euro zone countries would have to have much more co-ordinated economic policy, much more co-ordinated debt policy,” he said.
Cameron, who opted out of a new European economic pact late last year, advocated Britain’s position outside the euro and its ability “to do things to ourselves, for ourselves, by ourselves.
“I have always believed different countries at times will need different economic policies, interest rates tailored to their own needs.”
Cameron said, however, that it is in Britain’s interest to see a return to growth in the euro zone, which accounts for 40 percent of UK exports.
“We want them to sort out the problems that they have. We want to be in the single market, we want European co-operation, we don’t want to be in the euro,” Cameron said.
“The euro is a project in transition that could go in a number of different ways … all these countries have to make their own choices.”
The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine
Tuesday, 08 May 2012 10:32
‘The last line of a 17th century poem by John Donne prompted Louise Noble’s quest. “Women,” the line read, are not only “Sweetness and wit,” but “mummy, possessed.”
Sweetness and wit, sure. But mummy? In her search for an explanation, Noble, a lecturer of English at the University of New England in Australia, made a surprising discovery:
That word recurs throughout the literature of early modern Europe, from Donne’s “Love’s Alchemy” to Shakespeare’s “Othello” and Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene,” because mummies and other preserved and fresh human remains were a common ingredient in the medicine of that time. In short: Not long ago, Europeans were cannibals.’
Read more: The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine
The European Stabilization Mechanism, Or How the Goldman Vampire Squid Just Captured Europe
Thursday, 19 April 2012
‘In September 2008, Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, managed to extort a $700 billion bank bailout from Congress. But to pull it off, he had to fall on his knees and threaten the collapse of the entire global financial system and the imposition of martial law; and the bailout was a one-time affair. Paulson’s plea for a permanent bailout fund—the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP—was opposed by Congress and ultimately rejected.
By December 2011, European Central Bank president Mario Draghi, former vice president of Goldman Sachs Europe, was able to approve a 500 billion Euro bailout for European banks without asking anyone’s permission. And in January 2012, a permanent rescue funding program called the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) was passed in the dead of night with barely even a mention in the press. The ESM imposes an open-ended debt on EU member governments, putting taxpayers on the hook for whatever the ESM’s Eurocrat overseers demand.’
BASF Gives Up on Pushing GMOs in Europe, Moves Operations to US Where ‘Frankenfoods’ are Not Labeled
Tuesday, 03 April 2012 07:09
‘The latest health freedom victory in Europe means more toxic “Frankenfoods,” aka genetically-modified (GM) crops, for the United States. EurActiv.com reports that Germany-based biotechnology giant BASF is officially calling it quits on trying to push GM crops in Europe. But the company’s withdrawal means that it will be relocating its plant science headquarters from Limburgerhof, Germany, to Raleigh, North Carolina.
When explaining why BASF was pulling out of Europe entirely, Stefan Marcinowski, a company board member in charge of plant biotechnology, said in a statement that “the majority of consumers, farmers and politicians” in Europe oppose GMOs. He added that “it does not make business sense to continue investing in products exclusively for cultivation in [the European] market.”‘
US Exempts 10 EU States Plus Japan From Iran Sanctions
Wednesday, 21 March 2012 06:31
‘US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement on Tuesday that the exemption covers financial institutions from 11 nations – Belgium, Britain, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain, AFP reported.
“The actions taken by these countries were not easy…. They had to rethink their energy needs at a critical time for the world economy and quickly begin to find alternatives to Iranian oil, which many had been reliant on for their energy needs,” she added.’
Read more: US Exempts 10 EU States Plus Japan From Iran Sanctions
EU Halts Imports of US-Based Corn Gluten Feed Due to GMO Contamination
Tuesday, 10 January 2012 07:48
‘The European Union (EU) has rejected roughly one million tons of US-based corn gluten feed, a leftover byproduct of corn processing that is commonly fed to conventional livestock, over concerns that it might be tainted with illegal genetically-modified organisms (GMO). Unlike the US, the EU still has at least some standards when it comes to GMOs, and has typically been much slower to adopt them compared to countries in North and South America.
Reuters Africa reports that corn gluten shipments into the EU have basically stopped as a result of contamination concerns, and that many traders are now trying to figure out a solution. However, the report slants the issue and blames EU restrictions, rather than the US tainted food supply, for the ordeal, and suggests that the EU needs to loosen its standards to keep the supplies going.’
Read more: EU Halts Imports of US-Based Corn Gluten Feed Due to GMO Contamination
Europe’s ‘Troubled Assets’ Bank Bailout: Germany’s Chancellor Merkel Pushes for a Eurozone ‘Banktatorship’
Tuesday, 06 September 2011 06:56
‘The Bundestag will have one chance to stop Angela Merkel’s plan to provide hundreds of billions of dollars to underwater EU banks that made bad bets on sovereign bonds. If the German parliament fails to block Merkel on September 23, then–under the “expanded powers” of the European Financial Security Facility (EFSF)– insolvent banks will be bailed out and the costs will be passed on to eurozone taxpayers.
Despite her populist bloviating (“We won’t be bullied by the markets”), Merkel is a devout Europhile committed to a fiscal union ruled by bankers and bondholders, a Banktatorship. Presently, she is doing whatever she can to hurry the process along before hostile bond vigilantes roil the markets and bring the EU banking system crashing down.’
The Rise of Knights Templar Europe
‘The initial response to the appalling act he did was that he was a madman. Geir Lippestad, the lawyer of the 32-year-old Breivik who claimed responsibility for the death of 76 people said, “This whole case indicated that he is insane.” Later, he however said his “client is part of an anti-Islam network with around 80 terror cells across the West with two in Norway.”
While rejecting the existence of such cells in Norway, Norwegian domestic intelligence chief Janne Kristiansen says she does not think Breivik is insane, “I have been a defense lawyer before and in my opinion this is clearly a sane person because he has been too focused for too long and he has been doing things so correctly. In my experience of having had these sorts of clients before, they are normally quite normal but they are quite twisted in their minds, and this person in addition is total evil.”
Yet, to the dismay of many, a 1,467-page document containing gruesome details of the terrorist act soon revealed that Breivik belonged to a group he helped form known as the ‘Knights Templar Europe’ when he met eight other extremists in London in 2002 in order to “seize political and military control of western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda.”‘
Believe nothing 