Category: Europe

But Will They Roll on Bush and His Evil Minions&trade

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Polish prosecutors are considering charging the former Polish President and PM with war crimes for allowing the CIA to operate gulags in their country:

Polish prosecutors are considering bringing charges of war crimes against the country’s former prime minister and former president over allegations of secret CIA prisons.

Former president Aleksander Kwasniewski and former prime minister Leszek Miller, who held office between 2001 and 2004, may stand trial before the State Tribunal, a court specifically designed to try Poland’s top officials, Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza reported on Wednesday (4 August).

The court’s prosecutor wants to ask the speaker of parliament to initiate the criminal procedure against the two men. The case would first have to go to a parliamentary committee and then to the lower house of parliament, which would decide whether or not to press charges, the news report says.

One hopes that eventually we find someone who is willing to sing on this, and the Shrub and the Smiler will end up in the dock.

It does seem that this is all beginning to unravel, and perhaps we are near a point where revelations breed further revelation.

Dutch Defer JSF Decision Again

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It looks like they might buy a 2nd test aircraft, in order to preserve some workshare for Dutch firms, but that it’s unlikely that they will sign a deal for a production run at this time.

Not surprising, they are undergoing austerity cuts to meet Euro zone budget guidelines, cutting, “education, healthcare and social security spending,” so why purchase an aircraft that costs (at least) 5 times as much as the F-15, and costs (at least) twice as much to operate?

H/t ELP Defens(c)e Blog:

Silly Putty™ Armor

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BAE Systems* has developed what it calls a liquid armo(u)r, that is supposed to be proof against bullets:

A liquid armour has been shown to stop bullets in tests carried out by UK scientists at BAE systems in Bristol.

The researchers have combined this “shear-thickening” liquid with Kevlar to create a new bullet-proof material.

The company is keeping the chemical formula of the liquid a secret, but it works by absorbing the force of the bullet strike and responding to it by becoming much thicker and more sticky.

The BAE scientists describe it as “bullet-proof custard”.

In theory, this is fairly simple, it’s a non-Newtonian fluid, and you can see this behavior with silly putty™ or water and corn starch.

Of course in practice, finding the proper characteristics, and my guess is that a lot of this has to do with the peculiarities of the interaction between the Kevlar fibers and the fluid, is the tough part.

Seeing as how a body part won’t be moving at more than about 20 m/s, and a bullet would likely be moving at more than 100 m/s even at the extremes of range, developing a material with the appropriate characteristics is certainly technically possible.

*Full disclosure, I worked on the Future Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, FRMV, “wrecker” variant of the FCS-MGV† from 2003-2006 at United Defense (later BAE Systems after the Carlyle Group sold me to buy Dunkin Donuts).
†Future Combat Systems-Manned Ground Vehicle. These are the ones that are the tanks and APCs. As opposed to the various unnmanned vehicles, networking technologies, etc. that form the full FCS along with the MGVs.‡
‡Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.

Hungary Passes The Bank Tax

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Hungarian parliament has passed a law assessing a ½% levy on banks assets.

Needless to say, the banks are having a conniption over this:

Domestic and foreign banks doing business in Hungary have complained about the tax as well. Erste and Raiffeisen, two banks based in Vienna that have branches in Hungary, estimate they would have to pay €40 million and €35 million, or $52 million and $45 million, respectively.

“This tax is a quick-win measure, and only that,” said Juraj Kotian from Erste Group Bank in Vienna. “It does not provide any sustainable support for budget consolidation.”

The European Banking Federation called for a “profound modification” of the tax, saying it was a discriminative levy that would cause losses at some lenders and hamper economic growth.

This tax, which includes a levy on insurance companies as well is raising hackles for the same reason that Malaysia’s imposition of capital controls was vociferously attacked during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, because the market participants are terrified at the thought that this might work.

After all, Hungary is a very small fish in the overall EU economy, so if this tax fails, the impact is minimal, but if it is successful, then you can see an explosion in such taxes, just as you saw nations ignoring the IMF and imposing their own capital controls following Malaysia’s relatively mild recession and quick recovery.

If this becomes a more general practice, then it starts eating into 7 figure banker bonuses, which is not what the bankers want.

My prediction is that this will shrink the finance industry significantly in Hungary, and with the generally bloated and parasitic industry cut down to size, the Magyar republic will outperform its neighbors.

My earlier post on the attempts by the EU and IMF to browbeat the Hungarians into being the bank’s bitches is here, and my advice to them remains the same: back away from joining the Euro and set about leaving the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.

Because the Banks and Insurance Companies Own Us

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Hungary has just broken off talks with the IMF and the EU, because the IMF and EU only want deficit reduction on the backs or ordinary people, so throw pensioners into the streets, destroy your healthcare and education systems, and raise the VAT, but whatever you do, don’t raise taxes on banks and insurance:

Mr Orban had intended to raise some half a billion euros (187 billion forints) via a new tax on banks and insurance firms. The IMF however said this “”is likely to adversely affect lending and growth.”

More subtlely, the EU’s Mr Rehn said: “Care will also be needed to ensure a stable environment for both domestic and international investors.”

Brussels and the IMF will be hoping a swift sharp spanking from the markets will chasten Mr Orban’s government, but the move will also unnerve investor thinking about the condition of economies across the bloc, particularly in eastern Europe.

The truth here is that the bailout package is more a bailout of western banks than it is of Hungary, which is why the EU and the IMF find it unacceptable that banks actually pay taxes in Hungary.

If I were the Hungarian PM, I would start drawing up plans to reverse Hungary’s commitment to joining the Euro, and start immediate preparations to exit the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and allow the Forint to float.

It is clear that the deal with the Euro is that if you join, you don’t just lose sovereignty to the EU institutions, but to French, German, and British banks as well.

French National Assembly Votes to Ban Burqa

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The vote to ban face coverings in public places with only one no vote, and it now goes to the Senate, where passage almost certain.

I have actually lived in a place where face coverings were briefly banned, I discovered this when we had issues with Halloween masks one year, for reasons completely unrelated to religious observance.

As I stated a few months ago, I have some mixed emotions here.

First, there is already an extant ban on masks in public, so the law, with its €150 fine for wearing the veil seems to be gilding the lily. Simply by enforcing the existing ban on masks in public places could achieve the same effect.

That being said, criminalizing coercion by family members to wear the garb, the law calls for €30,000 fine and up to a year in jail, does seem to be an unalloyed good.

Of course, you really don’t have good guys on either side.

On one side you have right wing nativists, and on the other side, you have a profoundly medieval mindset which sees the subjugation of women as a core value.*

If there were only a way for both sides to lose this battle.

I don’t think that women should be wearing the burqa anywhere in the world, but I am still conflicted as to whether this needs to be put into law.

*In the interest of fairness, I consider the Jewish Heredim, the ultra orthodox, to have a, “profoundly medieval mindset which sees the subjugation of women as a core value,” as well.

Angela Merkel is Lucky That

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The bar for worst German leader ever is so high.

In the latest episode of this show, Ms. Merkel screwed the pooch on a political beauty pageant:

Chancellor Angela Merkel licked her wounds Thursday after rebels in her coalition turned a straightforward presidential election into a humiliating debacle that made her look weaker than ever.

In theory, Merkel’s coalition had more than enough votes in an assembly of lawmakers and public figures to secure comfortably on Wednesday an election of the conservative Christian Wulff to the largely ceremonial job of head of state.

She may have a future as a reverse barometer in her next job.

Economic Datapoint of the Day

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Click for full size


Iceland’s falling GDP


Iceland’s low unemployment

Matthew Yglesias, as an afterthought in a post highlighting one of the truly trippiest campaign videos ever, notes that despite Iceland’s plummeting GDP, unemployment remains relatively mild compared to the other European* red-headed step children.

The difference is, of course, the fact that Iceland is not a part of the Euro zone, and as such is not locked into a monetary union with the Germans who continue to pursue an export driven beggar-thy-neighbor policy with a zeal that approaches that of the Chinese.

The real question about the Euro has always been whether it would survive bad times, but perhaps the question should be whether or not the Euro made sense in the 1st place.

*Yes, I know, Iceland is an island, and not a part of Europe proper, but the same could be said for Cyprus, and Iceland is even more tightly tied to western Europe.

Deep Thought

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Perhaps the British royal family is not as overpaid as I thought:

You would have to pay me a lot of money to make me wear those hats, and I occasionally frequent the company of Orthodox Jewish women at services, and their bad taste in hats is legion, though clearly nothing compared to this.

Link.

IMFed

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Yes, going through a debt crisis means selling off state assets at pennies on the dollar, so that private operators can underfund basic maintenance and overcharge consumers for luxuries like, you know, water:

Greece on Wednesday outlined plans to sell stakes in state-owned railway, water and real estate companies as part of a drive to raise billions of euros to help restore its ailing public finances.

…………

The European Union/International Monetary Fund bailout for the heavily indebted country projects revenue of 1 billion euros ($1.22 billion) per year from privatizations for the 2011-13 period.

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As part of the plan, the cash-strapped government will sell 49 percent of loss-making railway company OSE, 39 percent of Hellenic Post, 23 percent of Thessaloniki water EYATH and 10 percent in Athens water EYDAP.

I hope you are ready for the riots when people’s water bills triple overnight.

It’s sh%$ like this makes things worse.

The method is: sell the assets at an undervalued price, remove the revenue stream from your control, and they tell you that net result will be financial stability.

No, it’s just a slope to bankruptcy and the destruction of the middle class, and it is why the IMF is so justifiably despised across the world.

Economics Update

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The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index fell from 60.4 in April to 59.7 in May. Note that this is still expansion, but it is a slower rate of growth.

Seeing as how the 2nd derivative is a pretty twitchy number anyway, I’d wait for the June numbers, and perhaps July, to see if there is a trend.

Meanwhile, construction rose by 2.7% from March to April, the largest one month jump in almost 10 years.

Additionally, serious mortgage delinquencies fell marginally, but since this is the first time that they have fallen since the real estate bubble started to pop in 2007.

Meanwhile, in the department of, “If you listen to the Germans when you set up a currency, you will get screwed,” unemployment in the Euro zone rose to 10.1% in April. (PDF)

Elections Have Consequences, Lib-Dems in UK Coalition Edition

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I’m pretty sure that one of the conditions for the Liberal Democrats to enter into a coalition with the Tories was that a hard date be set for a withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the recent statement by the Defens(c)e Minister would appear to confirm this:

Senior British officials, including new Foreign Secretary William Hague arrived in Afghanistan May 22 with a warning that Britain wants to withdraw its troops as soon as possible.

Hague, Defence Secretary Liam Fox and International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell are set to meet President Hamid Karzai in their first visit to the country since a new coalition government took power in London this month.

…………

In an interview with The Times newspaper before arriving in Kabul, Fox made clear the visit would focus on speeding up the withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan, and that no new troops would be deployed.

“We need to accept we are at the limit of numbers now and I would like the forces to come back as soon as possible,” he was quoted as saying.

“We have to reset expectations and timelines.

“National security is the focus now. We are not a global policeman. We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy in a broken 13th-century country. We are there so the people of Britain and our global interests are not threatened,” Fox said.

Another contributing factor is that the Afghanistan adventure is phenomenally unpopular in Britain, so a continued trip down the path in the Hindu Kush is politically suicidal, notwithstanding any “special relationship”.

Dutch Hammer First Nail in JSF Coffin

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The Dutch Parliament has voted to cancel its procurement of the F-35 Lightning II JSF (also here):

Proposal 1 (SP):
The government not be permitted to contract any new obligations with the JSF program

Proposal 2 (Labour)
Cancelling the contract for the First LRIP3 test aircraft and get the money back from the US for the long lead items. Not buying/ signing contract for the Second LRIP4 test aircraft. Cancelling the participation in the MOU-IOT&E (Initial Operational Test and Evaluation)

Proposal 3 (Green Left)
Because the Evaluations of the F16 replacement in 2002 and in 2008 were based on wrong estimates and unreliable data, there needs to be a new evaluation done with new RFPs (Requests for Proposal).

All three proposals were approved by the Netherlands Parliament.

The Dutch were perhaps the heavily involved nation after the British on this program, and the fact that these motions passed, at least passed a 1st reading is telling.

This happened because the MPs believe that they program is late and over budget to such a degree that any program of offsets or technology transfer does not matter because the cost and schedule issues puts them in a situation with a hollow force that they cannot afford to actually operate the aircraft, or, for that matter, their military.

They understand the budget requirements of the Euro zone, and they realize that they are not willing to cut their social safety net, among the most generous in Europe, to support mindless wasteful military spending.

Words that I Never Thought That I Would Say (UK Edition)

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God bless the Tories.

It appears that they will be doing a real investigation of the UK government’s involvement with US Sponsored Torture:

A judge will investigate claims that British intelligence agencies were complicit in the torture of terror suspects, William Hague, the foreign secretary, said tonight.

The move was welcomed by civil liberties campaigners and may put pressure on the Labour leadership candidate and former foreign secretary David Miliband, who was accused by Hague, while in opposition, of having something to hide.

This is a far better policy than aiding and abetting the Bush/Cheney cover-up, “looking forward, and not back,” which is espoused by Barack Obama and His Evil Minions™.

Here’s hoping that they uncover some of the misdeeds of Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld in the process.