Category: Europe

Nope, No Escalation Here

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It looks like the Frogs and the Limeys will be deploying attack helicopters to Libya:

Britain and France are to deploy attack helicopters against Libya in an attempt to break the military stalemate, particularly in the important coastal city of Misrata, security sources have told the Guardian.

In a significant escalation of the conflict, the Apaches – based on HMS Ocean – will join French helicopters in risky operations which reflect deepening frustration among British and French defence chiefs about their continuing inability to protect civilians in Libya.

If I were a cynic, I would think that the goal is to get one of these choppers shot down, so that they have an excuse for an invasion when the captured crew are treated as unlawful enemy combatants.

Remember, It’s Only Censorship if It’s a Government

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So Murdoch owned Sky Italia dropping Current TV because it hired Keith Olbermann:

Former Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV cable network has claimed Rupert Murdoch’s Italian satellite TV company dropped the network in Italy because it hired liberal politics news anchor Keith Olbermann.

Imagine that.

If there is a lesson to the travails of Silvio Berlusconi, it is that private unregulated mass media outlets are a cancer on democracy, and Rupert Murdoch is just another example of this.

Is Angela Merkel the George W. Bush of the Eu?

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It appears that Ms. Merkel doesn’t realize that she’s not bailing out the Greeks, she’s bailing out the German banks who are owed the money, but she’s still being a hard-ass and virtually assuring that we will see defaults, as well as worsening social unrest:

Also at issue was the technical operation of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the permanent euro zone bailout fund due to come into force in mid-2013.

As ministers prepared to tackle the increasingly precarious financial situation in Greece, Dr Merkel made clear her resistance to any debt restructuring by the country.

Addressing students in Berlin, Dr Merkel said private sovereign creditors should not bear losses until the ESM starts its work.

“It would raise incredible doubts of our credibility if we simply were to change the rules in the middle of the first programme,” Dr Merkel said.

The rise in dissatisfaction with the EU, and the rise on nationalistic, and frequently xenophobic, parties in the EU is a direct result of the fact that it is being run as a support group for the banks, who, after all, were the ones who f%$#ed up everything in the first place.

I stick with my original statement on the Euro Zone: the country that needs to leave is not any of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain), but Germany, which has increasingly seen the Euro as a way to artificially deflate its currency for export purposes, both within and outside of the EU.

They are a predatory exporter, only marginally better than China.

Wrapping NHS Up In a Bow, and Giving It to Non-Profits

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Here’s a big surprise, the Tories intend to dismantle the National Health Service in the UK, and give it to for profit entities:

A senior adviser to David Cameron says the NHS could be improved by charging patients and will be transformed into a “state insurance provider, not a state deliverer” of care.

Mark Britnell, who was appointed to a “kitchen cabinet” advising the prime minister on reforming the NHS, told a conference of executives from the private sector that future reforms would show “no mercy” to the NHS and offer a “big opportunity” to the for-profit sector.

The revelations come on the eve of an important speech by the prime minister on the future of the NHS, during which he is expected to try to allay widespread fears that the reforms proposed in health secretary Andrew Lansley’s health and social care bill would lead to privatisation.

So not a shocker.

Conservatives realize that when government works, it becomes popular, and they don’t, so they spend most of their times trying to throw a monkey wrench (spanner in UK-speak) into the works.

If Your Allies are People Who Are Bigots

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And  you engage in neocolonialism masquerading as protecting dark people, in this case, the citizens of Libya, your allies will not support you, because bigots are stupid, so unless you say, “We are bombing Libya to give their oil to our energy conglomerates,” explicitly, they will not support you.

Case in point, Silvio Berlusconi and his racist buddies in the Northern League:

Italy’s belated decision to join the military campaign against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has brought fresh political woes for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, with opposition to the bombing threatening to sink his fragile coalition.

Senior figures in the Northern League want an end to Italian air strikes only a week after they began following a personal plea by US President Barack Obama to Mr Berlusconi. Parliament will vote on the Northern League motion to this effect later today.

The xenophobic coalition partner says the bombing will provoke a wave of illegal immigration from Libya to Italy’s southern coast, and is demanding Mr Berlusconi set a date to end the raids. Umberto Bossi, the pugnacious Northern League leader, had threatened to bring down the government if parliament was not allowed to vote on the issue. Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, another Northern League figure, predicted the government would fall if the bombing was not stopped.

Considering his road to power, I find that is one of the most schadenfreude rich stories I’ve heard in a while.

The phrase, “Hoist with his own petard,” comes to mind.

Someone Needs to Open Up a Can of Whup Ass on the Krauts

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The periphery in Europe is experience contracting GDP and a debt crisis. The most recent case is that of Portugal, which is now asking for an EU bailout.

Unfortunately the conditions of the bailout are always the same Teutonic prescription:

  • Austerity budgets, which hike taxes and cut spending.
  • Paying off the banks that lent the money to the governments at 100¢ on the dollar.

The problem that this creates is:

  • Social instability.
  • Further GDP contraction, which increases debt load relative to the GDP.
  • Declining tax revenues.

The prescription for these problems is:

  • Austerity budgets, which hike taxes and cut spending.
  • Paying off the banks that lent the money to the governments at 100 ¢ on the dollar.

Rinse, lather, repeat.

The problem here is two-fold, and they are both of German origin:

  • The Germans have never gotten over their bout with hyperinflation in the 1920s, and so feel that inflation is the only battle to fight.
    • This also, at German insistence, got baked into both the Euro and the European Central Bank (ECB), which has no mandate to do anything by keep inflation low.  Unlike the Fed it has no mission to minimize unemployment as well.
  • There is a complete unwillingness by the EU and the ECB to allow for hearcuts on the bondholders, which (surprise) appear to largely be the German banks.

This  is why, on the basis of spiking commodity prices, driven largely by the Libya conflict, the ECB has just raised its benchmark rate.

The thing here is that there is an awful lot of pain being inflicted to support German philosophy*, as well as supporting the bad debts of their banks, which would be insolvent by any realistic evaluation of this debt.

When someone big enough† finally tells the German banks to go pound sand, things should get interesting.

*Which, according to my physicist brother, is also why quantum mechanics such a pain, the the formative texts were written by Germans, who felt an obligation to be obscure and confusing.
†And I don’t mean Spain big. If the new government in Ireland gives a 50¢ haircut to the bond holders, the Germans will have a banking experience to rival our S&L crisis of the 1980s.

The Irish Elections, and What it All Means…

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Former Prime Minister, and former Fianna Fail head, Brian Cowen, in an unintentionally apt photograph

So, Fianna Fail, having been in government for 60 of the past 79 years, has been tossed out by a resounding margin.

They fell 59 seats to 18 in Parliament, and the Green party, its coalition partner, lost all of its seats, while Fine Gael picked up 19 seats to 70, the Labour Party picked up 16 seats to 36, Sinn Fein(!) picked up 9 to get 13, the United Left Alliance (a coalition of various socialist parties) picked up 5 seats, and the new “New Vision” Party picked up 1 seat.

This is obviously a crushing defeat for Fianna Fail, and for the bank coddling policies, where the indemnified not just the depositors, but the banks’ bond holders, thereby committing the Irish taxpayers to what can only be called “debt slavery”.

What is interesting here is that Fine Gael is actually a further right party than Fianna Fail, and what the voters were really calling for were basically three policies:

  • F%$# the Irish banks.
  • F%$# the foreign banks that hold Irish debt.
  • F%$# the banks.

Whether this electoral landslide has any long term effects has to do with whether the people who voted for real change actually see it.

While there is both a moral and treaty obligation to make the account holders whole (up to something around €20,000), the idea that the Irish are impoverishing themselves in order to prop up foreign bond holders, largely British and German, who received higher returns than they would have at home because of the higher risk, banks is clearly something that the average Irishman finds unacceptable.

A lot of people are talking about how this is a seismic reshaping of the Irish body politic, but I doubt it.

My guess is that Fianna Fail will be back in the majority in the next election, because now that the opposition has control of government, we will see half measures, and coddling of both the Irish banks and their foreign creditors, which will result in a tsunami in the other direction in the next elections.

As has been noted, a, “deeply indebted economy with just 1.8 million people at work cannot underwrite private banking liabilities of €200bn.”

If Fine Gael, (and one their likely coalition partner Labour) do not understand this, and do not force haircuts on the bond holders through threat of default (which has the added benefit of transferring the pain to the feckless Angela Merkel ), the voters will turn on them.

For a recent political case study on the wages of timidity in this sort of a crisis, one need only look to the US, and the Democratic Party under the leadership of one Barack H. Obama.

Clearly the British Isles Must Be Invaded For Their Own Protection

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Yes, These Are Royal Wedding Commemorative Condoms

I came across a web page titled, “Lie back and think of England,” in which someone is flogging condoms commemorating the royal wedding.

Clearly they have forfeited any right to self governance.

Needless to say, this does not apply to the Republic of Ireland, who do not have the Royals as head of state, though their dealings with their banks does make one wonder about whether they are suited for self government, but that is a post for another day.

Unsurprising News of the Day

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In the last election, the City banks, the London equivalent of Wall Street, supplied half the campaign donations for the Tories:

Financiers in the City of London provided more than 50% of the funding for the Tories last year, new research has revealed, prompting claims that the party is in thrall to the banks.

A study by the Bureau for Investigative Journalism has found that the City accounted for £11.4m of Tory funding – 50.79% of its total haul – in 2010, a general election year. This compared with £2.7m, or 25% of its funding, in 2005, when David Cameron became party leader.

The research also shows that nearly 60 donors gave more than £50,000 to the Tories last year, entitling each of them to a face-to-face meeting with leading members of the party up to and including Cameron.

The study shows the impact that Michael Spencer has had on party funding. He was appointed by Cameron as Tory treasurer in an attempt to reduce the influence of Lord Ashcroft, the party’s former deputy chairman. Spencer was asked by Cameron to increase the number of relatively small donations of £50,000 to curb the influence of large donors such as Ashcroft, and for these smaller donations the City was place to look.

Relatively small donations of fifty thousand quid? That’s like eighty thousand US Dollars!

This might explain why their proposals to reign in bankster pay are so toothless.

And Now for Some Non Congressional News…

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George W. bush canceled a speaking engagement in Europe because he feared that he would be arrested for torture:

Former U.S. President George W. Bush has cancelled a visit to Switzerland, where he was to address a Jewish charity gala, due to the risk of legal action against him for alleged torture, rights groups said on Saturday.

Bush was to be the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod’s annual dinner on Feb. 12 in Geneva. But pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he enters the Alpine country.

Criminal complaints against Bush alleging torture have been lodged in Geneva, court officials say.

Human rights groups said they had intended to submit a 2,500-page case against Bush in the Swiss city on Monday for alleged mistreatment of suspected militants at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. naval base in Cuba where captives from Afghanistan, Iraq and other fronts in the so-called War on Terror were interned.

Well, it’s nice to know that there are still a few nations out there that take crimes against humanity seriously.

Unfortunately, I’m not living in one of those nations.

Why a Carbon Tax is Superior to Cap and Trade

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In either case, the consumer pays for it, but a carbon tax can go to things like government programs (Or, if you are of that ilk, per person rebates that favor the less well off), while carbon trading enriches polluters, the Vampire Squids of the world, and people who game the system for personal profit:

The European Commission suspended trading in greenhouse gas emissions permits on Wednesday for at least a week after the theft of permits worth millions of euros via online attacks.

The Emissions Trading System was a target of “recurring security breaches” over the last two months, the commission, the executive agency of the European Union, announced on its Web site Wednesday.

The commission said it needed to shut the system down until at least Jan. 26 because “incidents over the last weeks have underlined the urgent need” for enhanced security measures.

The attacks raised new questions about the viability of Europe’s main tool to combat a rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The stolen permits are part of Europe’s effort to cap the amount of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, that companies may emit each year. Europe’s system is the world’s largest market for greenhouse gas emissions credits.

The only advantage to carbon trading is that it gives politicians the ability to give another revenue stream to their classmates from Ivy League/Oxbridge/Sorbonne/Etc. who work in investment banks.

It’s a giveaway to the investment banker, and an invitation to fraud, the case of hydroelectric plants in China without transmission lines to accumulate credits being just one such example.

And the Insanity Continues

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So after a ruinous recession, the economy shrunk by over a fifth, made worse by austerity programs that were intended to maintain a hard peg to the Euro, Estonia’s government has finally achieved the desired result, and at the start of the year, Estonia joins the Euro Zone.

Truth be told, the Estonian government set it up such that there was no choice, since it maintained a hard peg to the Euro, and the Deutsch Mark before that, and almost all the loans outstanding are foreign denominated, so there really never was any sort of fiscal or economic sovereignty in the small Baltic Republic.

If anyone expects an improvement in the standards of living as a result of this though, they are very likely to be disappointed.

The New Labour, Now Without Labour!

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The new head of the British Labour Party is moving to sever financial ties with unions and to diminish their influence in decision making:

Ed Miliband is to distance Labour from its trade union paymasters by diluting the party’s financial dependence on them and reducing their role in electing the party leader.

Labour has proposed introducing a ceiling on donations to any political party which could be as low as £500, The Independent has learnt. The move could break the long-running deadlock between the parties on agreeing a new system of financing politics.

Seems reasonable, if he can get the Tories to forswear big money from the rich bankers who fund them, but there is also this:

He also wants to change Labour’s culture by allowing the public a vote when the party chooses its leader. He plans to give 25 per cent of the votes to non-party members who register as Labour supporters. MPs, trade unionists and party members would also each have a quarter of the votes in Labour’s electoral college. At present, MPs, union and party members each have a third of those votes.

Mr Miliband’s moves are bound to cause tensions with the unions. They are all the more surprising because he depended on union support to defeat his brother, David, for the Labour leadership in September.

So, it appears that Milibrand’s vision of the Labour Party is one in which actual labo(u)r has a significantly diminished role.

I suggest that he look south and east to Israel, where the Israeli Labor party most recently polled in 4th place in elections, as compared to a party, ad its predecessors, that controlled the government for the first 29 years of Israel’s existence.

Basically, if you take labor out of a labor party, you have nothing left.