Category: Europe

Fabulous!

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If there is a Western European country that I would not have expected to vote for same sex marriage, it is Ireland.

Once again, I am pleased to be proved wrong, as Ireland became the first nation to approve same sex marriage by referendum:

Ireland became the first nation to approve same-sex marriage by a popular vote, sweeping aside the opposition of the Roman Catholic Church in a resounding victory Saturday for the gay rights movement and placing the country at the vanguard of social change.

With the final ballots counted, the vote was 62 percent in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage, and 38 percent opposed.

The turnout was large — more than 60 percent of the 3.2 million eligible voters cast ballots, and only one district out of 43 voted the measure down. Cheers broke out among the crowd of supporters who had gathered in the courtyard of Dublin Castle when Returning Officer Riona Ni Fhlanghaile announced around 7 p.m. that the ballot had passed, 1,201,607 votes to 734,300.

Not long ago, the vote would have been unthinkable. Ireland decriminalized homosexuality only in 1993, the church dominates the education system, and abortion remains illegal except when a mother’s life is at risk. But the influence of the church has waned amid scandals in recent years, while attitudes, particularly among the young, have shifted.

This wasn’t just a victory, this was a blowout.

The Catholic Church needs to get with the program. If they get blown out in Ireland, in a plebiscite no less, they need to know that they have lost the war.

Rather ironically, at nearly the same time, Northern Ireland just killed same sex marriage:

Politicians in Northern Ireland will face intense pressure from LGBT rights campaigners to “catch up” with the rest of western Europe after the Irish Republic overwhelmingly backed same-sex marriage in a referendum.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions will join Amnesty International and gay rights group the Rainbow Project to hold a mass rally in support of equal marriage rights on 13 June, while a legal test case has also been lodged with Belfast’s courts.

After Friday’s historic referendum, in which the Republic’s voters endorsed same-sex marriage by 2-1, Northern Ireland remains the last country in western Europe where LGBT couples are barred from getting married.

Attempts to legislate to allow gay marriage have been vetoed by the Democratic Unionist party and a majority of Ulster Unionists in the devolved Northern Ireland assembly at Stormont.

An ICTU spokesman said the region needed to catch up with the rest of democratic Europe – and in particular every other part of the UK. “In 1998 Northern Ireland became one of the most advanced places on earth for human rights. Section 75 of the Good Friday agreement dealt with human rights and enshrined the rights of every citizen to be treated equally in Northern Ireland,” he said.

“Since then Northern Ireland has slipped back in terms of the human rights agenda and is now isolated in the UK as the only place where a gay couple cannot get married. The rally will be held in solidarity with the gay community.”

Section 75 of the Good Friday agreement guarantees the right of every citizen to avail themselves of state services in the region. LGBT rights campaigners believe that these services include marriages in civil spaces such as council chambers.

Amnesty’s campaign director in Northern Ireland, Patrick Corrigan, has called for a mass turnout at the rally, which will start from Belfast’s Writers Square at 2.30pm. Corrigan said people in Northern Ireland should show they are “sick of living in a discriminatory backwater for gay people”.

Last month, a Sinn Féin motion on marriage equality fell after 47 Stormont assembly members voted in support while 49 unionists voted against. Even if there had been a small majority in favour, the DUP would have exercised a special veto drawn up under devolution.

So, we have the political wing of the IRA agreeing with Ian Paisley’s DUP.

I gotta think that this is more political posturing than anything else.

Basically, no one wants to be a first mover.

The British Have Their Own Version of the Cadillac Driving Welfare Queen

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One of the oft repeated claims in UK politics, are that there are families for whom three generations that have never worked. The quotes have been made by any number of politicians, most commonly Tories, but also Tony “Bush’s Poodle” Blaire.

It turns out that no one can find any evidence that even one such family ever existed:

This month I ran a workshop with a group of first year undergraduate sociology students at Teesside University (in the North East of England). Our students tend to be from working-class or lower-middle class backgrounds and often the first in their families to go to university. I’d been invited to give an insight into a ‘real life’ research project, and I began by asking for responses and thoughts about some quotations:

‘Behind the statistics lie households where three generations have never had a job’ (ex-British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, 1997).

 ‘…on some deprived estates…often three generations of the same family have never worked’ (Iain Duncan Smith, 2009; now British government Minister for Work and Pensions).

 ‘To reintroduce the culture of work in households where it may have been absent for generations’ (Universal Credit, Department of Work and Pensions, 2010; this is a document that introduces a very major overhaul of UK welfare payments).

 ‘…there are four generations of families where no-one has ever had a job’ (Chris Grayling, ex-Minister for Work and Pensions, 2011).


 The idea that there are families in the UK with three (or four, or five and even six have been claimed) generations where no one has ever had a job is a particularly powerful orthodoxy. It is often repeated, rarely questioned, becoming part of a taken for granted vernacular. I was struck by the students’ comments. One said, ‘well, it must be true if all these [people] are saying it’. Another felt the same because ‘they wouldn’t say it unless there was loads of data to back it up’. Simple ideas boldly spoken (and repeated) by people in authority can carry real weight.

 ………

But my colleagues and I are social scientists, so instead of relying on ‘personal observations’, Tracy Shildrick, Andy Furlong, Johann Roden, Rob Crow, and I began rigorous research to see if there really were families like this. We have continued thinking, analysing, writing about, and presenting the complexities of the research material that we gathered since then. The research generated other questions, but, unusually for a sociological study, we found a clear and unequivocal answer to this first question: the existence of families where ‘no one had worked for three generations’ is highly unlikely.

 We searched very hard to find such families. We chose two extremely deprived working-class neighbourhoods – in Glasgow and Middlesbrough, because we assumed that they were the sorts of places most likely to reveal this phenomenon. Despite deploying all the strategies and tactics we could think of (including financial inducements), we were unable to find any. This does not mean that they do not exist. Some people believe in fairies or Yetis, and one cannot prove they do not exist. We can say, however, that it is highly improbable that they do. Or, if they do, their numbers are infinitesimally small. Other research drew upon the best available secondary statistics and concluded that less than half of one per cent of all workless households in the UK might have two generations where no one had ever had a job. Households with three generations that have never worked are, logically, going to be far, far fewer in number than even this tiny fraction.

 This was, actually, a quite predictable conclusion. A little socio-economic history helps. How long is ‘three generations’? Maybe sixty years, so back to the 1950s, or earlier. The proposition is that there are families where no one has had a job since the 1950s. The UK welfare state has become tougher and tougher over this period, particularly in the last few years. We have very tight ‘conditionality rules’ and ‘activation tests’; recipients of unemployment benefits must provide evidence of their worthiness for these on a weekly basis. It is difficult to imagine a person being able to defraud the state for the whole of his/ her working life – and then his/ her son or daughter doing the same and then his/ her son or daughter after them, for sixty years.

So this family appears to never have existed, but that didn’t stop various people, including the Smiler (Blair) from using it on the stump.

To be fair to Ronald Reagan, (I f%$#ing cannot f%$#ing believe that I f%$#ing just said that) in his case, he was referring to one individual, Linda Taylor ((AKA Connie Walker, AKA Linda Bennett, AKA Linda Jones, AKA Connie Jarvis, AKA Martha Louise Miller, AKA Martha Louise White), who did use a number of aliases to defraud social welfare programs, though it appears this was only one of many criminal endeavors.

Ms. Taylor appeared to be a veritable criminality, with allegations of a lot of other crimes, including kidnapping, baby trafficking, and murder.

Bad Day at the Office

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Click for slideshow


Yes, I think that this is a class 1 mishap

I think that this is the wing

Because of some as yet undetermined braking issue, a Hungarian Gipen overran the runway at the Lion Effort 2015 military exercise: (Google Translate, original here)

Air base in Caslav Gripen crashed Hungarian army. He slid off the runway and ended up in a field. The pilot ejected. Both are fine. The army said that the aircraft not brake, but it is not clear whether it was pilot error or a technical fault to blame. Damaged aircraft is probably damaged beyond repair.

“At this moment I can say that the aircraft slid off the runway. Pilots are in accordance with the provisions ejected. If the machine is uncontrollable and threatens serious accident, they must leave the plane. Both, however, are in order and nothing dramatic happened in the outcome, “said iDNES.cz Defense Ministry spokesman Petr Medek.

Airport spokesman Tomas Maruscak on Czech Television said that the aircraft not brake. “At the moment it is not possible to say whether it is to blame pilot error or a technical failure,” he said. According to him, the aircraft ended up in a field.

The airplane rolled out of the runway at approximately 13:40. Until the sixteenth hour airport was closed because of an accident and other flights are diverted to the airport in Pardubice. “Aircraft accidents being examined by the Commission of the Department of Military Aviation Section of Supervision and Control of the Ministry of Defense,” said Magdalena Dvorakova of the Communication Department of the General Staff.

The fact that both men escaped without injury, it is not obvious. Ejection from an aircraft that is on the runway, is a very difficult matter. “Ejection at zero altitude for pilots is a big adrenaline rush when I say it in quotation marks,” he told ČTK former military pilot Jan Vachek. According to him, it can only seat state of the art, which are equipped with Gripen fighters.

According to another expert, who asked not to be named, the Gripen crashed beyond repair. Damage could increase antenna systems located at the end of the runway, which is likely to aircraft at high speed when landing entered.

In Caslav held an international exercise Lion Effort 2015, air exercise States whose armies have any versions of the JAS-39 Gripen. Outside the Czech participates just Hungary, and Sweden. The Kingdom of Thailand participating without their aircraft.

Martin Baker ejection seats save another two unlucky aircrew.

Labour Loses Big in the UK Elections

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They got their clock cleaned in an election that was supposed to be too close to call:

Oh how painfully familiar this is. Any Labour supporter of my generation has been here too often before, hopes raised and dashed on the night. A wash of blue sweeping the board is excruciatingly familiar. But all the same, for every poll to be so dreadfully wrong delivered a profound shock to a stunned Labour party.

 A dismal night for Labour – extraordinary to lose more seats than Gordon Brown lost last time. Nuneaton just before 2am felt like the coffin nail that confirmed the exit poll’s accuracy. Forget neck and neck, this was a terrible trouncing.

 Why? Under their skin, a lot of old hands felt in their bones that it was remarkable that Labour was level pegging when the Tories had everything in their favour. Never has there been such a mighty blast of nearly all the press denouncing Labour in the crudest ways. Add to that six months of nothing but good economic news, on jobs and on growth, with orchestrated paeans of praise from business. Even if people didn’t feel it in their pockets, they were fed a story of sunlit uplands ahead.

Inside Labour the inquest will be bitter, a battle ahead that risks turning into a grim repeat of old arguments between Blairites and Miliband radicals. Was it the man, or was it his ideas that were defeated?

 But it’s far from clear that Cameron will relish his victory. He has won it at a dreadfully high cost. He was forced to concede an EU referendum that risks taking Britain out of the EU. The volcanic eruption of nationalism in Scotland will be turbo-charged by another Conservative government they didn’t elect. Cameron’s wretched place in the history books looks set to be the man who broke the union, and left a diminished little England as his legacy. This may be the last election of a United Kingdom ever, both Labour and Tories sharing some blame.

 As I write, it’s not clear Cameron has won a majority. If not, the Fixed Term Parliament Act – passed in haste to be deeply regretted by all – means he can’t threaten an election to bully minor parties into supporting him. But if he has pulled it off, the country can expect an even more radically rightwing government. Austerity of double the ferocity lies ahead, benefits cut to the marrow, public services shredded. The NHS can expect accelerated privatisation while the BBC should prepare itself for savage treatment in next year’s charter renewal. Labour’s failure to stave off this future will lead to great soul-searching and self-blame.

The aforementioned Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 makes the calling of an election because a coalition member has pulled out or a loss of confidence in government vastly more difficult, which should give Cameron plenty of time to privatize Britain’s National Health Service.

This is not a good day for the UK, and I think that it gives impetus to both the anti EU factions and the forces of Scottish independence.

It was supposed to be close, but Labour leader Ed Milibrand explicitly ruled out any coalition with the Scottish National Party, which had the effect of  driving almost all of Scotland to go SNP:

After a shock exit poll forecast that the SNP could win 58 out of Scotland’s 59 seats, early count figures suggested the party would win all seven of Glasgow’s Labour-held constituencies, eight months after the city voted yes to independence, also unseating Scottish Labour’s former deputy leader Anas Sarwar.

Interestingly enough, labor actually picked up a bit on the total votes, but they got steamrolled on a by constituency level:

National results (so far, only 520 of the 650 of the seats have been decided) indicate that Labour was eliminated as a political force in Scotland (for a while, at least), and that the Lib-Dems have been absolutely demolished.

Party Seats Gain Loss Net Votes Vote share (%) Swing (points)
Conservative 229 26 6 20 8,286,508 34.3% -0.1
Labour 208 18 46 -28 7,777,190 32.2% 1.2
Scottish National Party 55 49 0 49 1,434,291 5.9% 3.9
Democratic Unionist Party 8 1 1 0 184,260 0.8% 0.0
Liberal Democrat 6 0 38 -38 1,820,063 7.5% -14.7
Sinn Fein 4 0 1 -1 176,232 0.7% -0.0
Plaid Cymru 3 0 0 0 181,704 0.8% 0.0
Social Democratic and Labour Party 3 0 0 0 99,809 0.4% -0.1
Ulster Unionist Party 2 2 0 2 114,935 0.5% N/A
UK Independence Party 1 0 0 0 2,955,216 12.2% 9.3
Others 1 0 3 -3 214,683 0.9% N/A
Green – – – – 855,008 3.5% 2.7
Alliance 0 0 1 -1 61,556 0.3% 0.1

I would argue that the poor showing of the Lib Dems is a good thing. They were not a moderating element in coalition with the Tories, and the only principles that they pushed with any vigo(u)r were those were electoral policies which would serve to put them in a position as a junior coalition partner yet again. Good riddance.

UKIP more than tripled their share of the vote, but (thankfully) it appears that they will have somewhere between 0 and 2 MPs.

However, even without their winning many/any seats, their rise is yet another indicator of how right wing nativist parties are gaining traction throughout the EU.

I Wish that I Were Finnish

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IN Finland, fines are based on daily earnings, so a rich asshole got a a €54,024 fine for doing 64 in a 50 zone:

Getting a speeding ticket is not a feel-good moment for anyone. But consider Reima Kuisla, a Finnish businessman.

He was recently fined 54,024 euros (about $58,000) for traveling a modest, if illegal, 64 miles per hour in a 50 m.p.h. zone. And no, the 54,024 euros did not turn out to be a typo, or a mistake of any kind.

Mr. Kuisla is a millionaire, and in Finland the fines for more serious speeding infractions are calculated according to income. The thinking here is that if it stings for the little guy, it should sting for the big guy, too.

The ticket had its desired effect. Mr. Kuisla, 61, took to Facebook last month with 12 furious posts in which he included a picture of his speeding ticket and a picture of what 54,024 euros could buy if it were not going to the state coffers — a new Mercedes. He said he was seriously considering leaving Finland altogether, a position to which he held firm when reached by phone at a bar where he was watching horse races.

“The way things are done here makes no sense,” Mr. Kuisla sputtered, saying he would not be giving interviews. Before hanging up, he added: “For what and for whom does this society exist? It is hard to say.”

………

But the idea that the rich should pay heavier fines did not seem to be much in question. “It is an old system,” said Pasi Kemppainen, chief superintendent at the National Police Board. “It may lead to high fines, but only for people who can afford it.”

In fact, the Finnish “day fine” system, also in use in some other Scandinavian countries, dates to the 1920s, when fines based on income were instituted for all manner of lesser crimes, such as petty theft and assault, and helped greatly reduce the prison population.

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The fines are calculated based on half an offender’s daily net income, with some consideration for the number of children under his or her roof and a deduction deemed to be enough to cover basic living expenses, currently 255 euros per month.

Then, that figure is multiplied by the number of days of income the offender should lose, according to the severity of the offense.

Mr. Kuisla, a betting man who parlayed his winnings into a real estate empire, was clocked speeding near the Seinajoki airport. Given the speed he was going, Mr. Kuisla was assessed eight days. His fine was then calculated from his 2013 income, 6,559,742 euros, or more than $7 million at current exchange rates.

Someone committing a similar offense and earning about 50,000 euros a year, or $54,000, none of it capital gains, and with no young children, would get a fine of about 345 euros, or about $370. Someone earning 300,000 euros ($322,000), would have to pay about 1,480 euros ($1,590).

My heart bleeds borscht for Reima Kuisla.

Man up you over-pampered parasite.

To Honor the 70th Anniversary of the end of the Holocaust, the Ukraine has Commemorated Nazi Collaborators………

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No, this isn’t The Onion, it’s just the Ukraine being the Ukraine.

They have officially honored Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis:

The U.S.-backed Ukrainian government came up with a curious way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Holocaust being brought to an end. The parliament in Kiev voted to extend official recognition to Ukrainian fascists who collaborated with the Nazis in killing Jews.

 Though Official Washington and the mainstream U.S. media continue to dutifully ignore the key role played by neo-Nazis in Ukraine’s February 2014 coup and in the post-coup regime’s subsequent military offensives against ethnic Russians in the east, Ukrainian politicians can’t stop their arms from snapping into Heil Hitler salutes like the fictional character Dr. Strangelove. They can’t hold back this reflex even as the world stopped this week to recall the Nazi barbarity that claimed the lives of some six million Jews as well as other minorities.

 On April 9, the Ukrainian parliament passed a bill making the ultra-nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army eligible for official government recognition, a demand that has been pushed by Ukraine’s current neo-Nazi and ultra-nationalist movements, the same forces that spearheaded the overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 and then the slaughter of thousands of ethnic Russians who resisted the new order.

 Ukraine’s honor-the-Nazi-collaborators vote came amid increased repression of opposition politicians and journalists who dare to criticize the U.S.-backed regime as it moves to repudiate the political settlement envisioned by February’s Minsk-2 agreement and instead prepares for a resumption of the war to crush the resistance in eastern Ukraine once and for all.

………

 During World War II, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, an offshoot of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, collaborated with the Nazis in their orgy of mass murder against Jews, Poles and other minority groups. The UIA also joined with the Nazis in fighting against the Soviet Union’s Red Army, although some UIA elements did ultimately turn against the Germans over their occupation of Ukraine.

 Ukraine was the site of several major Holocaust atrocities including the infamous massacre at Babi Yar in Kiev, where local Ukrainian fascists worked alongside the Nazi SS in funneling tens of thousands of Jews to a ravine where they were slaughtered and buried.

 According to the Jerusalem Post, the Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned Ukraine’s recognition of the UIA as well as a second bill that equated Communist and Nazi crimes.

 “The passage of a ban on Nazism and Communism equates the most genocidal regime in human history with the regime which liberated Auschwitz and helped end the reign of terror of the Third Reich,” said Wiesenthal Center director for Eastern European Affairs Dr. Efraim Zuroff, adding:

“In the same spirit the decision to honor local Nazi collaborators and grant them special benefits turns Hitler’s henchmen into heroes despite their active and zealous participation in the mass murder of innocent Jews. These attempts to rewrite history, which are prevalent throughout post-Communist Eastern Europe, can never erase the crimes committed by Nazi collaborators in these countries, and only proves that they clearly lack the Western values which they claim to have embraced upon their transition to democracy.”

You’ve seen a lot of this in the Baltic states, Poland, and the Ukraine.

This is not surprising, as they are ……… the Baltic states, Poland, and the Ukraine.

Note that the US has been aggressively supporting the people who successfully fought for this, the Svoboda party the Pravy Sektor militia, taking it so far as to vote against a measure condemning those who glorify Naziism in the UN.

I do not know if there are any good guys in this conflict, but they ain’t it.

This was a Foreseeable Consequence of the German Hegemony in the European Union

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The EU sanctions against Russia have to be renewed by a unanimous vote.

It’s a core feature of EU governance, and it’s also why the aggressive growth strategy of the organization is a bad idea. It allows any nation to hold major decisions hostage.

Now, after many years of being punished by, and being used as a political whipping boy by Germany, Greece is looking to discuss EU sanctions against Russia:

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras plan to discuss economic ties and the European Union’s sanctions against Moscow when they meet for talks next week, a Kremlin spokesman said on Friday.

 Russia wants the EU to lift the sanctions imposed over Moscow’s role in the turmoil in Ukraine and hopes to get support from some EU member states, notably Hungary and Greece.

 The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said it was too early to talk about any possibility of Moscow providing financial help to the cash-strapped Greece before the talks.

 “Relations between Moscow and the European Union will be discussed in the light of Brussels’s policy of sanctions and Athens’ quite cold attitude to this policy,” Peskov said.

 Greece’s new left-wing government has said it will not seek aid from Moscow but has so far failed to reach a deal with its EU/IMF creditors to unlock fresh funds.

 Putin and Tsipras will meet in Moscow on April 8. It will be Tsipras’ first visit to the Russian capital after his leftist Syriza party swept to victory in a snap election in January.

I don’t expect the meeting to generate any substantive policy changes in Greek foreign policy, but it is a warning that, absent some amelioration of the EU and IMF created humanitarian crisis in Greece, there could be substantive changes in EU foreign policy.

The EU and the Euro zone are both in trouble because the people behind it decided to move forward before the necessary economic and political structures were in place. (To say nothing of popular support, as shown by the repeated failures of plebiscites for the treaties and subsequent re-votes.)

I do not think that the Euro will survive in its current form, (I expect pretty much all the non-Germanic nations to drop out eventually) and I would give even money that the EU will either be scaled back to a simple customs union, or that a significant number of members will leave in the next 10-20 years.

UK, France, Germany, and Italy to Join the Chinese led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, White House Unamused

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After many years with the Congress delaying IMF reform to allow greater influence for emerging market nations, China has created its own analogue, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

The United States has responded by leaning on nations to not join the bank.

It’s not working. First, Britain joined the bank despite heavy US pressure:

The White House has issued a pointed statement declaring it hopes and expects the UK will use its influence to ensure that high standards of governance are upheld in a new Chinese-led investment bank that Britain is to join.

In a rare public breach in the special relationship, the White House signalled its unease at Britain’s decision to become a founder member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) by raising concerns about whether the new body would meet the standards of the World Bank.

The $50bn (£33.5bn) bank, which is designed to provide infrastructure funds to the Asia-Pacific region, is viewed with great suspicion by Washington officials, who see it as a rival to the World Bank. They believe Beijing will use the bank to extend its soft power in the region.

The White House statement reads: “This is the UK’s sovereign decision. We hope and expect that the UK will use its voice to push for adoption of high standards.”

George Osborne – who has discussed the decision to become a founder member of the investment bank with his US counterpart, Jack Lew – has been the driving force behind developing closer economic ties between Britain and China. The chancellor has led the way in encouraging Chinese investment in the next generation of civil nuclear power plants in the UK and he ensured that the City of London would become the base for the first clearing house for the yuan outside Asia.

The US administration made clear in no uncertain terms its displeasure about Osborne’s decision to join the AIIB. A US official told the Financial Times: “We are wary about a trend toward constant accommodation of China, which is not the best way to engage a rising power.”

Britain was unsurprised by the decision of the US administration to air its concerns in public after the formal announcement that the UK would join the new investment bank. Sources said, in addition to the talks about British plans between the chancellor and the US treasury secretary, British and US officials have been in regular contact ahead of the announcement. UK officials say that, by joining the bank as a founding member, Britain will be able to shape the new institution.

In its statement to the Guardian, the White House national security council said: “Our position on the AIIB remains clear and consistent. The United States and many major global economies all agree there is a pressing need to enhance infrastructure investment around the world. We believe any new multilateral institution should incorporate the high standards of the World Bank and the regional development banks.

And then a week later, France, Germany and Italy joined the AIIB:

A senior US diplomat said it was up to individual countries to decide on joining a new China-led lending body, as media reports said France, Germany and Italy have agreed to follow Britain’s lead and join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

A growing number of close allies were ignoring Washington’s pressure to stay out of the institution, the Financial Times reported, in a setback for US foreign policy.

In China the state-owned Xinhua news agency said South Korea, Switzerland and Luxembourg were also considering joining.

The Financial Times, quoting European officials, said the decision by the four countries to become members of the AIIB was a blow for Washington, which has questioned if the new bank will have high standards of governance and environmental and social safeguards.

The bank is also seen as contributing to the spread of China’s “soft power” in the region, possibly at the expense of the United States.

On Tuesday Washington’s top diplomat for east Asia signalled that the concerns about the AIIB remained but the decision on whether to join was up to individual nations.

“Our messaging to the Chinese consistently has been to welcome investment in infrastructure but to seek unmistakable evidence that this bank … takes as its starting point the high watermark of what other multilateral development banks have done in terms of governance,” US regional assistant secretary of state Daniel Russel said in Seoul.

If you think that this is really about transparency in the new bank, I have some of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction that I want to sell you.

This is about the US maintaining hegemony over international financial institutions.

The maintenance of hegemonic control of international institutions, along with the maintenance of an overwhelming military force, seem to be the paramount goals of the United States.

It is also unsustainable.

If America’s poodle, the UK, ignored US pressure to join this bank, it is clear that the “Unipolar World” edifice created following the fall of the USSR is a model that the rest of the world is no longer willing to tolerate.

If the US is forced to go it alone on everything, we will eventually run out of the resources to destabilize unfriendly regimes, rain down Hellfire missiles from drones, prop up despots, and invade other countries.

It would be much better if the military and foreign policy establishment in the United States realized this, and went forward with a transition to a more sustainable, and more humane, path, but I am not holding my breath on that one.

Really Bad Day at the Office

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Line width is altitude, circles represent speed


Little pieces indicate high speed impact

Germanwings Flight 9525 flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf has crashed in the Alps, there appear to be no survivors. The flight profile is kind of weird:

A passenger jet carrying 150 people crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday. Officials expect no survivors.

 Germanwings Flight 9525 left Barcelona at 10:01 a.m. CET for Dusseldorf and went down about 430 miles south-southeast of Paris. The plane, a 24-year-old Airbus A320, was operated by the Lufthansa-owned budget carrier.

Images from the crash site show small pieces of the plane scattered throughout the mountainside, suggesting a violent impact — and significantly decreasing the likelihood of any survivors.

 “Appalling images in this mountain landscape,” said Christopher Castaner, deputy mayor of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, near where the plane crashed. “There is nothing left but debris and bodies.”

 Germanwings officials initially said Flight 9295 sent a distress signal about an hour after takeoff before crashing into a mountainous zone at an altitude of about 6,550 feet.

 The descent from 38,000 feet lasted nearly eight minutes.

 However, France’s aviation authority reported that the plane never sent a signal, and officials lost radio contact with the flight. The plane went down in mid-flight — an uncommon occurrence as the majority of plane crashes happen during takeoff or landing.

(emphasis mine)

This is weird.

The flight profile appears to be consistent with a loss of pressure incident, where the pilots try to get down to safe altitude, and if this situation led to a loss of situational awareness as well, it could end with a CFIT (Controlled Flight Into Terrain).

But they should have gotten a call out, or at least change the transponder code to the emergency setting, but they did neither.

Another possibility is some sort of air data sensor problem, but I would expect something like an Air France 447 scenario, with a stall or some other departure under those circumstances.

Also, it appears that while the flight did divert from its assigned altitude, it did not deviate from its planned course.

That’s just plain weird:

  • The aircraft appeared under control throughout the flight.
  • There was no distress call.
  • They did not divert to a nearby airport.
  • The aircraft had been checked out by maintenance on the previous day. (First link)

This is, to quote Alice, “Curiouser and curiouser.”

Absent some conspiracy theories that sound like they came from the short-lived X-Files spinoff The Lone Gunman, I am at a loss.

Here’s hoping that the flight data recorder will provide a clue.

By the Way, the Germans Think that the US Supreme Allied Commander Europe and the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs are Bat-Sh%$ Insane

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I mean seriously nuts, as in Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper raving about how fluoridation is destroying our, “Purity of essence,” in Dr. Strangelove.

You remember that movie.  The world ends in the finale.

The headline in Der Speigel is, “Germany Concerned about Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine:

US President Obama supports Chancellor Merkel’s efforts at finding a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis. But hawks in Washington seem determined to torpedo Berlin’s approach. And NATO’s top commander in Europe hasn’t been helping either.

 It was quiet in eastern Ukraine last Wednesday. Indeed, it was another quiet day in an extended stretch of relative calm. The battles between the Ukrainian army and the pro-Russian separatists had largely stopped and heavy weaponry was being withdrawn. The Minsk cease-fire wasn’t holding perfectly, but it was holding.

 On that same day, General Philip Breedlove, the top NATO commander in Europe, stepped before the press in Washington. Putin, the 59-year-old said, had once again “upped the ante” in eastern Ukraine — with “well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery” having been sent to the Donbass. “What is clear,” Breedlove said, “is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day.”

 German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn’t understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn’t the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, did not share the view of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

 The pattern has become a familiar one. For months, Breedlove has been commenting on Russian activities in eastern Ukraine, speaking of troop advances on the border, the amassing of munitions and alleged columns of Russian tanks. Over and over again, Breedlove’s numbers have been significantly higher than those in the possession of America’s NATO allies in Europe. As such, he is playing directly into the hands of the hardliners in the US Congress and in NATO.

 The German government is alarmed. Are the Americans trying to thwart European efforts at mediation led by Chancellor Angela Merkel? Sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove’s comments as “dangerous propaganda.” Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even found it necessary recently to bring up Breedlove’s comments with NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg.

 The ‘Super Hawk’

But Breedlove hasn’t been the only source of friction. Europeans have also begun to see others as hindrances in their search for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict. First and foremost among them is Victoria Nuland, head of European affairs at the US State Department. She and others would like to see Washington deliver arms to Ukraine and are supported by Congressional Republicans as well as many powerful Democrats.

Indeed, US President Barack Obama seems almost isolated. He has thrown his support behind Merkel’s diplomatic efforts for the time being, but he has also done little to quiet those who would seek to increase tensions with Russia and deliver weapons to Ukraine. Sources in Washington say that Breedlove’s bellicose comments are first cleared with the White House and the Pentagon. The general, they say, has the role of the “super hawk,” whose role is that of increasing the pressure on America’s more reserved trans-Atlantic partners.

 ………

 But it is the tone of Breedlove’s announcements that makes Berlin uneasy. False claims and exaggerated accounts, warned a top German official during a recent meeting on Ukraine, have put NATO — and by extension, the entire West — in danger of losing its credibility.

A “Top German Official” just said that Breedlove is lying, and implied strongly that he is doing so to sabotage the negotiations.

………

 At the beginning of the crisis, General Breedlove announced that the Russians had assembled 40,000 troops on the Ukrainian border and warned that an invasion could take place at any moment. The situation, he said, was “incredibly concerning.” But intelligence officials from NATO member states had already excluded the possibility of a Russian invasion. They believed that neither the composition nor the equipment of the troops was consistent with an imminent invasion.

 The experts contradicted Breedlove’s view in almost every respect. There weren’t 40,000 soldiers on the border, they believed, rather there were much less than 30,000 and perhaps even fewer than 20,000. Furthermore, most of the military equipment had not been brought to the border for a possible invasion, but had already been there prior to the beginning of the conflict. Furthermore, there was no evidence of logistical preparation for an invasion, such as a field headquarters.

 Breedlove, though, repeatedly made inexact, contradictory or even flat-out inaccurate statements. On Nov. 18, 2014, he told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that there were “regular Russian army units in eastern Ukraine.” One day later, he told the website of the German newsmagazine Stern that they weren’t fighting units, but “mostly trainers and advisors.”

 ………

 Breedlove sees no reason to revise his approach. “I stand by all the public statements I have made during the Ukraine crisis,” he wrote to SPIEGEL in response to a request for a statement accompanied by a list of his controversial claims. He wrote that it was to be expected that assessments of NATO’s intelligence center, which receives information from all 33 alliance members in addition to partner states, doesn’t always match assessments made by individual nations. “It is normal that not everyone agrees with the assessments that I provide,” he wrote.

 He says that NATO’s strategy is to “release clear, accurate and timely information regarding ongoing events.” He also wrote that: “As an alliance based on the fundamental values of freedom and democracy, our response to propaganda cannot be more propaganda. It can only be the truth.” (Read Breedlove’s full statement here.)

Seriously.  His response is nuts.

What’s more is shows that Obama is willing to let people under his own command to “freelance” and sabotage diplomatic efforts.

………

 The government in Berlin is concerned that Breedlove’s statements could harm the West’s credibility. The West can’t counter Russian propaganda with its own propaganda, “rather it must use arguments that are worthy of a constitutional state.” Berlin sources also say that it has become conspicuous that Breedlove’s controversial statements are often made just as a step forward has been made in the difficult negotiations aimed at a political resolution. Berlin sources say that Germany should be able to depend on its allies to support its efforts at peace.

(emphasis mine)

It’s not just me.  The Germans, i.e. “German Sources”, are coming as close as they can to saying that General Breedlove is deliberately sabotaging the negotiations.

Later in the article, a German MP says, ON THE RECORD, “I would prefer that Breedlove’s comments on political questions be intelligent and reserved.” (emphasis mine)

Not, “Intelligent and reserved?”  It does not sound like General Breedlove has the confidence of our NATO Allies.

………

 Although President Obama has decided for the time being to give European diplomacy a chance, hawks like Breedlove or Victoria Nuland are doing what they can to pave the way for weapons deliveries. “We can fight against the Europeans, fight against them rhetorically,” Nuland said during a private meeting of American officials on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference at the beginning of February.

In reporting on the meeting later, the German tabloid Bild reported that Nuland referred to the chancellor’s early February trip to Moscow for talks with Putin as “Merkel’s Moscow stuff.” No wonder, then, that people in Berlin have the impression that important power brokers in Washington are working against the Europeans. Berlin officials have noticed that, following the visit of American politicians or military leaders in Kiev, Ukrainian officials are much more bellicose and optimistic about the Ukrainian military’s ability to win the conflict on the battlefield. “We then have to laboriously bring the Ukrainians back onto the course of negotiations,” said one Berlin official.

 ………

 Nuland has also been open — at least internally — about her contempt for European weakness and is famous for having said “F%$# the EU” during the initial days of the Ukraine crisis in February of 2014. Her husband, the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, is, after all, the originator of the idea that Americans are from Mars and Europeans, unwilling as they are to realize that true security depends on military power, are from Venus.

 When it comes to the goal of delivering weapons to Ukraine, Nuland and Breedlove work hand-in-hand. On the first day of the Munich Security Conference, the two gathered the US delegation behind closed doors to discuss their strategy for breaking Europe’s resistance to arming Ukraine.

And someone in that delegation was alarmed enough by this that they leaked this to the German press, suggesting that some of Breedlove’s or Nuland’s are appalled at their behavior.

In Berlin, top politicians have always considered a common position vis-a-vis Russia as a necessary prerequisite for success in peace efforts. For the time being, that common front is still holding, but the dispute is a fundamental one — and hinges on the question of whether diplomacy can be successful without the threat of military action. Additionally, the trans-Atlantic partners also have differing goals. Whereas the aim of the Franco-German initiative is to stabilize the situation in Ukraine, it is Russia that concerns hawks within the US administration. They want to drive back Moscow’s influence in the region and destabilize Putin’s power. For them, the dream outcome would be regime change in Moscow.

Yes, there are a lot of people in the US foreign policy and military establishments who are continuing to wage war on Russia.

These people are insane.  Russia has 2500-3000 active nuclear weapons.

No wonder you have Mikhail Gorbachev saying that the US war on Russia never ended.

The reason that the Russians see NATO as a belligerent power is because, largely under US prodding, it continues to be a belligerent power with regards to Russia.

About F%$#ing Time………

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Swedish prosecutors have agreed to interrogate Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy:

In an abrupt reversal, the Swedish prosecutor leading the investigation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has finally agreed to question him inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Assange, who has been holed up in the building for nearly three years, has been accused of but not formally charged with committing sex crimes in Sweden.

In an English-language statement Friday, the Swedish Prosecution Authority wrote that Director of Public Prosecution Marianne Ny “has made a request to Julian Assange’s legal representatives whether Assange would consent to being interviewed in London and have his DNA taken via a swab.”

Why the sudden change of heart?


“The reason the prosecutor now decides to request permission to interview Julian Assange in London is chiefly that a number of the crimes Julian Assange is suspected of will be subject to statute of limitation in August 2015 i.e. in less than six months’ time,” the statement says.

Previously, the Swedish Prosecution Authority was on record as saying that “the prosecutor’s assessment is that a request for legal assistance involving the questioning of Julian Assange in London would not take the case forward in a significant manner.”

It’s clear that a part of this is the fact that the prosecutor is facing the statute of limitations, but I think that another part is that, with Edward Snowden’s revelations, it’s pretty clear that the various attempts by the Obama administration to intimidate potential whistle blowers has clearly failed, so the Swedes are no longer being pressured by the US.

My guess is that the charges will expire without the prosecutor filing anything.

Fallout from German Intransigence with Greece

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Iceland has been trying to join the EU for the past few decades.

Not any more:

Iceland has announced it is dropping its bid to join the European Union in line with pledges made two years ago by its then-new eurosceptic government.

Iceland first applied for EU membership in 2009 but its foreign minister, Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson, said in a statement that the centre-right government had informed current EU president Latvia and the European Commission of its decision to annul the application.

“Iceland’s interests are better served outside the European Union,” the minister wrote on his website.

Iceland first applied for EU membership under a leftist government in 2009, when the country was badly shaken by an economic crisis that saw the Icelandic krona lose almost half its value, making eurozone membership an attractive prospect.

But the thorny issue of fishing quotas was seen as a key obstacle to joining the bloc, although it was never brought up in the accession talks.

Clearly, a lot of this was a worry about fishing rights, which had in the past resulted in hostilities between Iceland and the UK, and another part of this is the dispute between the UK and Iceland over insurance guarantees for their failed banks, as well as the UK using an anti-terror law to seize the assets of Icelandic banks.

I think that a bigger part is that the people of Iceland saw what was done to Ireland and Greece, and realize that EU accession doesn’t give them much beyond a loss of sovereignty to Germany, which has used its position to exert hegemony over Europe since the financial crisis.

Normally, this Level of Incompetence at this Level of Status Results in a Promotion, not a Demotion

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But it appears that the Norwegian culture is different form ours, as former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland has been demoted from his position as head of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee:

Norway’s Nobel peace prize committee has demoted its chairman, Thorbjørn Jagland, in a move unprecedented in the long history of the award.

The committee, which said the former Norwegian prime minister would remain as a committee member, gave no reason for its decision.

However, the renowned diplomat drew criticism shortly after becoming committee chairman in 2009 for awarding the prestigious Nobel to newly elected US president Barack Obama.

The move stunned the world and the recipient alike, as Obama had been in office less than nine months and the US was waging simultaneous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

After six years at the helm of the committee, Jagland, 64, will be replaced by deputy chair, Kaci Kullmann Five, the organisation said on Tuesday.

“There was broad agreement within the committee that Thorbjørn Jagland was a good chair for six years,” Kullmann Five told reporters, but declined to comment on the discussion.

Commentators and former Nobel laureates had criticised the committee’s decisions under Jagland’s stewardship.

Hitting back at critics after Obama’s prize, Jagland said the organisation wanted to praise the US leader’s early vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and capture “the spirit of the times, the needs of the era”.

Last year, a federal study estimated that the US will spend $1tn (£649bn) upgrading its nuclear arsenal over the next three decades.

Ohhh ……… Bummer of a birthmnark, Thorbjørn.

Your award recipient is responsible for more spending on nukes than the rest of the world combined.

………

And in 2012 Jagland became the face of a body that handed the award to the European Union for its commitment to “peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights”.

“The EU is clearly not the ‘champion of peace’ that Alfred Nobel had in mind when he wrote his will,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in an open letter with two other former laureates.

Jagland, a former leader of Norway’s Labour party who has served as prime minister, foreign minister and speaker of parliament, spent much of his career trying to bolster support for Norway to join the EU.

So the that award appears to be an attempt to political agenda that he has personally held for years.  (And then there is the whole thing that the EU seems like the most forceful attempt at German hegemony in Europe since that bloke with the funny mustache)

It is rather unsurprising, that Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu roundly condemned the selection of the EU as, “Clearly not the ‘champion of peace’ that Alfred Nobel had in mind when he wrote his will.”

Oh Snap.

I Think that the ECB Just Blinked

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The European Central Bank has just increased emergency liquidy funding to Greek banks by €5 billion:

The European Central Bank (ECB) just increased the amount of emergency funding available to Greek banks by €5 billion — despite indications that the savers were pulling less of their money out in February.

On Thursday, Reuters reported that the ECB was extending the Emergency Liquidity Assistance that can be given to Greek banks from its current (self-imposed) maximum of €60 billion to €65 billion. However, its reasons for doing so remain unclear.

Earlier reports had suggested that fears of deposit flight, where Greek savers withdrew their money from banks and deprived them of a key source of funding, after the left-wing Syriza party took power and the ECB altered its rules to prevent Greek government debt (and government-guaranteed debt) from being used to access its emergency loan programme were failing to materialise. A survey of Greek banks found that although savers remained nervous about the new government’s plans deposit outflows had slowed in February, according to Reuters.

What happened here is pretty clear.
The ECB tried to get tough and saw the beginnings of a bank run, and they reversed course because they knew that if there were a bank run in Greece, it would spread to the Southern tier of the EU, as people took out cash, or transferred money to banks in the north.
Merkel has been emphatic that a Grexit (Greek exit from the Euro Zone) would be manageable.
This shows that this is a delusion.

BTW, Those People Saying that Greece has no Leverage? It’s Bullsh%$

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Greece, the only Eastern Orthodox Christian nation in the Eurozone, has a number of close cultural ties to Russia.

What’s more, Russian tourism, which has been hurt by sanctions, is a big part of their economy.

It is not in Greece’s national interest to extend the sanctions, and I expect the new PM, and whoever ends up his Foreign Minister are likely to make this clear on any negotiations with the ECB and EU:

The first test for Syriza would be its stance toward European sanctions on Russia. EU measures including curbs on financing for Russian state-owned banks and a ban on the export of sophisticated energy-exploration equipment will lapse in July unless renewed unanimously by the 28 EU governments.

July is the same deadline for the continuation for Greece’s bailout.

I’m pretty sure that Greece could get a decent deal from Russia if it voted against sanctions.

Smells like leverage to me.

Syriza Wins Election

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He formed a (rather odd) coalition with the, “populist right-wing Independent Greeks party,” as he secured only 149 seats in the 300 seat assembly, Syriza chief Alexis Tsipras has been sworn in as Prime Minister:

A new chapter in Greece’s uphill struggle to remain solvent – and in the eurozone – has begun in earnest as anti-austerity politicians assumed the helm of government following the radical left Syriza party’s spectacular electoral victory on Sunday night.

Ushering in the new era, Alexis Tsipras was not sworn in, as tradition dictates, in the presence of Archbishop Iernonymos but instead took the oath of office in a civil ceremony. At 40, he becomes the country’s youngest premier in modern times.

The leftist, who surprised Greeks by speedily agreeing to share power with the populist rightwing Independent Greeks party, Anel, was on Monday afternoon handed a mandate by president Karolos Papoulias to form a government following his investiture at the presidential palace. Afterwards, the new prime minister pronounced that he will give his all “to protect the interests of the Greek people”.

Earlier, Panos Kammenos, Anel’s rumbustious leader, emerged from hour-long talks with Tsipras saying the two politicians had successfully formed a coalition.

“I want to say, simply, that from this moment, there is a government,” Kammenos told reporters gathered outside Syriza’s headquarters.

This was a bit of a surprise.

It was generally expected that the centrist/center left The River (To Potami) party would be a likely coalition partner, who would be expected to be more attuned with Syriza’s stated policies.

I think that there were 7 reasons for him to go with Anel:

  1. To Potami was formed roughly a year ago by a TV news personality, Stavros Theodorakis, and as such its existence beyond this election cycle is not by any means a sure thing.  (Anel is only a bit older, having been formed in 2012)
  2. Theodorakis is very much not a Euroskeptic, and drew “Red Lines” (German) on leaving the Euro and a deposit levy, and taking the first item off the table fatally weakens the Greek negotiating position.
  3. To Potami has very much focused on “Structural Reforms” (which appear to be defined as the reduction in patronage and corruption) to the exclusion of everything else, which would also make them an unreliable.
  4. Anel has a history of working left wing parties on issues of common interest. (Panhellenic Citizen Chariot)
  5. Anel is Euroskeptic, and really hates the Germans. (It has a demand for reparations from Germany for WWII).
  6. The founder of Anel is a long term politician, the founder of To Potami is a news talking head.  I think that the latter is far more likely to channel the behavior of pastry chefs.
  7. To Potami seems to be kind of a “Seinfeld” party, in that it doesn’t seem to be about much beyond platitudes, and Theodorakis’ personality.

 In any case, it is significant that Tsipras’ first act as PM was pretty clearly a bit “F%$# You” to the Germans:

His first act as prime minister was to lay flowers at the National Resistance Memorial at Kaisariani, which commemorates 200 Greeks who were killed by Nazis there in the second world war. The highly symbolic act was interpreted by Greek TV commentators as “another up yours to the Germans”.

I would call it a very well deserved “Up Yours” to the Germans.  Merkel has been “n***er baiting” the southern tier of the Eurozone for domestic political consumption, .

As to what it means, a lot of ink (electrons?) has been spilled about how little leverage Greece has, but this has been the same media sources who try to cast Syriza as the new Khmer Rouge.

Two Nobel Prize economists, Joseph Stiglitz, and Paul Krugman, have both weighed in on the damage inflicted by “confidence fairy” based austerity today, and they both gave it a thumbs down.

Stiglitz is very clear, and he blames Germany, not Greece for the disaster that is the policy for Greece: (And Ireland and Portugal, and to a lesser degree, Spain and Italy)

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz told CNBC on Monday that the euro zone should stay together but if it breaks apart, it would be better for Germany to leave than for Greece.

“While it was an experiment to bring them together, nothing has divided Europe as much as the euro,” Stiglitz said in a “Squawk Box” interview.

………

Greece is not the only economy struggling under the euro, and that’s why a new approach is needed, Stiglitz said. “The policies that Europe has foisted on Greece just have not worked and that’s true of Spain and other countries.”

………

He said the real problem is Germany, which has benefited greatly under the euro. “Most economists are saying the best solution for Europe, if it’s going to break up, is for Germany to leave. The mark would raise, the German economy would be dampened.”

Under that scenario, Germany would find out just how much it needs the euro to stay together, he added, and possibly be more willing to help out the countries that are struggling. “The hope was, by having a shared currency, they would grow together.” But he said that should work both ways.

I’ve been saying that Germany is the problem, and not the solution for a while.

Prof Krugman sees it as primarily a failure of policy brought on by adherence to thoroughly discredited economic theory:

To understand the political earthquake in Greece, it helps to look at Greece’s May 2010 “standby arrangement” with the International Monetary Fund, under which the so-called troika — the I.M.F., the European Central Bank and the European Commission — extended loans to the country in return for a combination of austerity and reform. It’s a remarkable document, in the worst way. The troika, while pretending to be hardheaded and realistic, was peddling an economic fantasy. And the Greek people have been paying the price for those elite delusions.

You see, the economic projections that accompanied the standby arrangement assumed that Greece could impose harsh austerity with little effect on growth and employment. Greece was already in recession when the deal was reached, but the projections assumed that this downturn would end soon — that there would be only a small contraction in 2011, and that by 2012 Greece would be recovering. Unemployment, the projections conceded, would rise substantially, from 9.4 percent in 2009 to almost 15 percent in 2012, but would then begin coming down fairly quickly.

What actually transpired was an economic and human nightmare. Far from ending in 2011, the Greek recession gathered momentum. Greece didn’t hit the bottom until 2014, and by that point it had experienced a full-fledged depression, with overall unemployment rising to 28 percent and youth unemployment rising to almost 60 percent. And the recovery now underway, such as it is, is barely visible, offering no prospect of returning to precrisis living standards for the foreseeable future.

………

Still, in calling for a major change, Mr. Tsipras is being far more realistic than officials who want the beatings to continue until morale improves. The rest of Europe should give him a chance to end his country’s nightmare.

I’m inclined to go with Stiglitz’ here. 

I think that once again, the German sense of exceptionalism has screwed up the Eurozone from day one, and until the rest of the member nations get together to challenge Merkel’s fairy tail, the Euro will continue to circle the drain.

The Phrase “Bad Optics” Doesn’t Even Begin to Describe This………

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The German government has selected former SS Barracks at the Buchenwald concentration camp to house asylum seekers:

Plans to house asylum seekers in a former SS barracks at a Nazi concentration camp are causing controversy in Germany.

 Local authorities in the city of Schwerte, in western Germany, want to house 21 asylum seekers in a Nazi-era barracks believed to have been used by SS guards at a local outpost of the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp.

 Germany is facing an acute shortage of accommodation for asylum-seekers while their claims are assessed. A huge influx of refugees, many of them fleeing the violence in Syria and Iraq, has left official shelters overcrowded and forced local authorities to improvise alternatives.

 But the Schwerte authorities have been accused of bad taste over their decision to use a former SS barracks building to make up the shortfall.

 “This is not a normal place, not just anywhere, but a place of exploitation, oppression and unbounded violence,” Christine Glauning, director of the Documentation Centre for Nazi Forced Labour, told Spiegel magazine’s website.

Seriously?

Thank You Lassana Bathily

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He was an employee at the Hyper Cacher supermarket who managed to get about 15 people into hiding during the hostage taking and subsequent siege:

As the authorities in France worked on Saturday to piece together the sequence of events at a kosher supermarket in Paris where a gunman and four hostages were killed on Friday, there was an outpouring of praise online for a young employee credited with saving the lives of some customers by hiding them in a cold-storage room.

The employee, Lassana Bathily, 24, was identified in the French news as a Muslim from Mali who worked at the supermarket, Hyper Cacher, near the Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris.

………

When the people he had hidden came out at the end of the siege, Mr. Bathily said, “they congratulated me.”

“They said, ‘Really, thanks for thinking of all these ideas.’ I said, ‘It’s nothing, it’s life.’ ”

It ain’t nothing.

You kept your head, and helped a lot of people.

It is a big deal.

We Need to Recognize the Fact That the Right to Blaspheme is an Essential Right

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I do not think that there is really much more to say about the religiously motivated shooting of staff at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris:

The police organized an enormous manhunt across Paris on Wednesday for three suspects they said were involved in a brazen and methodical slaughter at a satirical newspaper that had lampooned Islam.

The terrorist attack by masked gunmen on the newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, left 12 people dead — including the top editor, prominent cartoonists and police officers — and was among the deadliest in postwar France. The killers escaped, traumatizing the city and sending shock waves through Europe and beyond.

Officials said late Wednesday that the suspects had been identified and that two were brothers. They were identified as Said and Cherif Kouachi, 32 and 34, and Hamyd Mourad, 18. French news reports said the brothers had been born in Paris, raising the prospect that homegrown Muslim extremists were responsible.

Religion has been one of the most powerful, and most violent, forces in human history.

To degree that we as a species have any rights at all, we must protect the right to mock and insult religion.

The Battle over Tax Avoidance in the EU Begins

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The EU is instituting major changes in the taxation of digital items in EU.

It makes changes in the Value Added Tax (VAT), both in rates and how it is assessed:

Europe’s tax showdown could be headed straight to people’s wallets.

With the new year, a change in fiscal rules in the European Union is increasing the tax on many purchases of digital content like e-books and smartphone applications.

Under the new rules, first approved in 2008, the tax rate on digital services like cloud storage and movie streaming will be determined by where consumers live, and not where the company selling the product has its European headquarters. Tax experts say Europe’s revamped rules could add up to an extra $1 billion in annual tax revenue for European governments.

The bit about having the VAT assessed based on the location of the purchaser (technically it works this way in the US, but this rule is rarely followed).

This this is all about the predatory tax policies of places like Luxemburg and Ireland:

The changes to Europe’s so-called value-added tax — a tax on goods and services similar to sales taxes in the United States — are part of a continuing push by lawmakers to tax the region’s digital economy more heavily. Companies like Apple and Amazon have been roundly criticized for housing their European operations in low-tax countries like Ireland and Luxembourg. The companies say they operate there legally.

Many of the world’s largest tech companies selling digital products, like Amazon and Microsoft, now house their European digital businesses in Luxembourg, where the V.A.T. rate is as low as 3 percent for e-book purchases. In contrast, countries like Britain charge companies a 20 percent sales tax for selling e-books. Analysts say the current rules provide an advantage to global companies that have the financial muscle to shop around for the lowest tax rate.

………

One of the European countries most affected by the tax change will be Luxembourg. The small country’s low value-added tax rates have enticed Apple to set up its international iTunes business there, and Microsoft’s digital download operation is also based there.

Luxembourg’s corporate tax system is being challenged by several European investigations into whether politicians gave preferential treatment to the likes of Amazon and a financing unit of Fiat, the Italian carmaker. And Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s former prime minister, who now runs the executive arm of the European Union responsible for the continuing investigations, has been criticized for his role in promoting the country’s low-tax policies.

For the longest time, the EU thought that the status of tax haven EU members was considered a feature, and not a bug, but with the current fetish for austerity, this attitude appears to changed.

In any case, it is about to really suck for Luxemburg and Ireland, whose economies are largely built on being tax evasion.