Rights Review

An essay on US demographics: how white is white?

May 17th, 2012

by admin Posted on May 17, 2012

The New York Times is saying god is dead, sang Bob Dylan. Now, the newspaper that likes to “print and be damned”, is saying that more than half of live births in America are non-white. But is this the news … Continue reading →

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Israel goes silent as major military decision looms

April 28th, 2012

by admin Posted on April 28, 2012

Yuval Diskin, ex-chief of Israel’s Shin Bet domestic intelligence, has sharply attacked his own prime minister. The US ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, says American military plans to strike Iran are ready and other indications in Israel indicate that government … Continue reading →

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Achtung! €€€€! Big Money hears sound of falling Euro governments. Young need jobs. Dare-to-bare protesters greet a World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland

‘Gangsters party’ gets bold welcome from protesters in cold January weather

Something’s got to give. The sound of falling governments in Europe shows that voters are questioning the right of Germany and the big banks to impose austerity regardless of its effects in very high unemployment and crippled economies. France seems set to change hands from a hard-right position to moderate socialist, the British Tory government is in some trouble, and governments have fallen in wealthy Holland as well as in infinitely poorer Romania.The Czech government is in difficulty too, and others may be soon. The worsening economic picture, despite promises of a turn-around, makes it more difficult for sitting governments to hold a hard line on growth.

The new European treaty mandating even tighter spending controls is under attack, not least from the probable new French president, whose name happens to be Hollande. France has been Angela Merkel’s most important EU ally, with Holland and other northern European nations more or less onside. Whether it will be a victory for the vox populi of Europe, or the bondholders who have them in hock, is the question. It’s a classic issue of democratic rights versus the control of the money supply (the new means of production in a primarly fiscal universe).

It is a divide that always helps explain why the money man prefers to subvert democracy, because he sees it as the rule of the mob, the demos that haunted both Plato and Aristotle. The mere idea of democracy caused the masteminds of Greco-Roman rational thought to favour such control figures as the Platonist philosopher-king over the rule of the masses. The philosopher-king can all too easily move from radical conservatism to benign despotism and on to full-blooded dicatatorship.

Before Athens collapsed, defeated by the warrior nation Sparta, the city had 300,000 people, six times as large as London in 1500. About one-third were slaves, half were citizens, and the rest were foreign traders. It was the great financial polis of one of the richest periods in history, a city built on silver mining, trade and financial services – today it is an unretrieved fantasy, an impoverished city on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, a forgotten sea. Then it had plague, today poverty.

Ironically the golden age of philosophy – and theatrical tragedy – reached its height when Athens lost the Peloponnesian war to Sparta. It is as if freedom from the tyranny of money opened the door to human thought and artistic freedom, even though Plato banished the artist and the poet from his enlightened Republic.

The most famous historian of the period, Thucydides, who was also one of the defeated Greek generals, warns us of our own discontents, perhaps echoed in General Eisenhower’s warning to beware the “military-industrial complex”, a famous quote uttered only as Ike left the presidency. Thucydides said he wrote not for his own time but for all time:

- Most people will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.

- War is a matter not so much of arms as of money.

- The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.”
———-
In Athens today, the new euro mob, as in the voting democracies of a pluralist Europe, is getting fed up with the rule of another Mob, a hidden mafia, or the oligarchical mafiya in Russia, that wants all the money for itself. Its chief strategy, true of mafias everywhere, is to lend out money (often laundered if not actually stolen) to wash it clean in a liquidity bubble, and then insist the borrowers pay it back at usorious rates and in real money, assets like gold or property sometimes acceptable. Or sign over your wages, as Greek workers are effectively being asked to do.

The battle is being fought over debt, and much of the blame is being attached to southern Europe and to the peripheral nations in the east. But when the Dutch government falls over a policy austerity, it is a different story.

So what a new French president may have to propose could have radical implications for growth. Francois Hollande would call for four modifications to the European Union treaty, including the creation of eurobonds, but not to pay off debt.

- He would use euro-backed bonds to finance industrial infrastructure projects.
- He would call for a financial transaction tax, which Sarkozy endorses.
- He would allow unused EU structural funds to be spent on growth.
- He would have the European Investment Bank place greater emphasis on job creation.

These are not terribly radical ideas, but they may seem so to bondholders who care only about being paid their debt interest, not financing renewal. Hollande says the European economy remains in a recession because “not enough credit is provided to companies.” Increased growth would help shrink debt. He believes other European leaders are coming closer to his argument that increased growth is “ultimately a more effective way of reaching the same goal of controlling the debt and reducing deficits.”

In contrast, the Merkozy axis has led the push for a treaty to limit euro annual budget deficits to 3 per cent of gross domestic product by 2013 and gradually reduce national debt to 60 per cent of GDP.

The economist Paul Krugman, who calls what is happening in Europe “economic suicide”, has consistently argued that austerity merely drives countries deeper into debt, because there is too little tax and other revenue coming in to pay off the bondholders – or the ‘stakeholders’ as the buzzword of the moment suggests.
It goes without saying that for liberal economists like Krugman, the real stakeholders are the people with jobs, or those who are looking for a job – which means most of the young people of Europe and many other countries. They are also the ones who inherit the debt, and the whirlwind that goes with it.

The drama in Europe is the leading edge of what some analysts fear will be a global bond collapse that can only be staved off with a new deal on debt and currencies. The collapse may have to come first. Only then is it likely that the accumulated wealth of the global money elite, amassed in many cases in created liquidity bubbles which roll over into debt, is going to be challenged. The big banks and their bondholders, inevitably, want to keep their hard-wangled funds intact, and to get a nice bond yield of five per cent or so, even as they themselves borrow at close to zero. But overall EU unemployment is 10.5 per cent, and 25 per cent in Spain.

It’s a looming war of the bank vaults versus ‘the people’ as ultimate producers of wealth. As Americans know, ‘the people’ act as the prosecution in any trial. When it comes down to the Constitution versus money, the constitution wins – unless it is subverted. And that requires some form of dictatorship, disguised though it may be.

For most people, the threat of being caught up in a dictatorship is very remote – Hitler is dead, Stalin’s gulag is closed, Mao is gone. What is there to worry about? Yes, America has the Patriot Act, and the threat of lifted passports and closed borders for the unwary, but dictatorship is too strong a word. In Europe, would-be dictators like the Mussolini successor, Berlusconi, have been laughed off the stage (though in his place is a pragmatic money-man trained by Goldman Sachs).

So now the political process may start to shift a little from extreme right to moderate centre-left. Unless, that is, the support for Marine Le Pen turns into something more significant, which seems unlikely unless geopolitical or other ‘accidents’ drive people back to the right (in a crisis, many people, not least the French, turn towards a Napoleon, or any little corporal who promises stability). Germans and others were taught to blame the rise of Hitler on reparations and the Weimar inflation. Others blamed it on a new German militarism, plus the drive or absolute power and corpororate control.

The new European economic process – if it is allowed to happen – may follow the moderating political one. Herman Van Rompuy, who calls EU summits as president of the European Council, has written to governments to say he may call a special summit – an invitation to dinner in Brussels in early June. “Over the past two and a half years the EU has had to react to the economic and financial crisis. This has not been easy and led to some frustration at times and strains,” he says deferentially. “We have had to deal with the urgent pressures of the sovereign debt crisis. The emphasis should now shift increasingly to prioritising measures that can boost growth and jobs.”

As France waited for a new presidency, Hollande was quick to respond robustly to any Merkel criticism. “It’s not Germany that decides for the whole of Europe,” he says, claiming support in his challenge to Merkel from other EU leaders, “even the conservative ones”. The immediate battleground may be the new European treaty, which sets tight limits on spending, forces governments to hand over money to deal with debt defaults, and generally acts as a strict budget-slashing central accountancy in all cases, regardless of national job needs in manufacturing, farming, tourism, property and other unpredictable areas.

Hollande has indicated that he is only committed to ratifying the EU treaty if it can be fine-tuned to boost jobs and economy growth policy. The treaty can come into effect even without France – or Ireland, which has to hold a referendum – but if that happened, it could mean the beginning of the end for political Europe, not to mention the euro.

Germany appears to hold all the cards in dealing with the future of the euro and the sovereign debt crisis, but the growing popular clamour across other European nations may retrieve memories of the terrible price that another German leader sought to impose in the 1940s. It is almost unethical in Europe to mention such analogies, but a German government that is deemed to be too big for its boots is not going to get the support it might like from the rest of Europe, especially as the crisis deepens and widens to include some €700 billion in Spanish debt and nearly €2 trillion in Italy. Who will pay those off if default looms?

One answer may be that Europe’s Central Bank will turn on the printing press and run off euros to cover all debts. So far, it has been very reluctant to do so, partly because of German fears of inflation. But the new head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi (another ex-Goldman hand), has also called for a “growth pact” despite insisting on no alternative to fiscal ‘consolidation’. The irresistible forces are gathering. Something will have to give, though who can say what it will be?

by admin Posted on April 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

Gold for oil sets up a global war US dollar could lose

April 24th, 2012

by admin Posted on April 24, 2012

Economic war is already happening, just below consciousness. But it is about to get more serious. By June 28, US economic sanctions will effectively block access to the international SWIFT bank settlements system to countries that continue to trade with … Continue reading →

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What the frack: it’s just another little ground shake

April 18th, 2012

by admin Posted on April 18, 2012

Let’s play earthquake. We’ll start with some small home-made quakes and see how it goes. We know - what the frack – that injecting high-pressure jets of water into the earth can destabilise terra firma enough to set it rocking, if not rolling. … Continue reading →

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Strip, squat, cough, spread your cheeks, bend over…

April 6th, 2012

by admin Posted on April 6, 2012

Lift your genitals: the new strip search free-for-all for any offence puts the American Constitution in moral jeopardy The world’s most powerful judges standing left, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, and Elena Kagan. Seated, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Chief … Continue reading →

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Exodus from Kabul (I): How control freak games fail

April 4th, 2012

by admin Posted on April 4, 2012

Ezra Miller, the young boy with the back garden wooden bow in Lynn Ramsay’s school massacre film, gets to play an older and more lethal steel strongbow psychopath in the apocalyptic final scenes of ‘We Need to talk about Kevin’, … Continue reading →

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Exodus from Kabul (II): the revenge tragedies begin

April 4th, 2012

by admin Posted on April 4, 2012

Afghan atrocities recall Vietnam retreat and the exploitation of soldiers who become agents and victims of their own psycho-pathology By CY JAMISON …Is the killing of 16 sleeping Afghani villagers, mostly women and children, the random act of a … Continue reading →

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US schools leave 75% unfit to fight for their country

March 22nd, 2012

by admin Posted on March 22, 2012

In a democracy, everyone has the right to an education, but getting a good one in the United States is so problematic that it could be endangering national security. Things are so bad in modern America that some 75 per … Continue reading →

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Israel blocks UN team on Palestinian settlements

March 22nd, 2012

by admin Posted on March 22, 2012

Israel has taken drastic action to block a United Nations’ team from getting into the West Bank or Israel to investigate Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Israel is cutting off working relations with the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council, the … Continue reading →

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20,000 arrests in New York abuse of police powers

March 18th, 2012

by admin Posted on March 18, 2012

In its crackdown on Muslims and other citizens, New York city police illegally charged some 22,000 people between 1983 and 2012, the New York Times says in an editorial upholding basic legal rights against abuse of police powers. “Prosecutors must … Continue reading →

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China takes control of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries

March 18th, 2012

by admin Posted on March 18, 2012

China signals a new form of Cultural Revolution as it appoints party managers to stop Buddhist monks running Tibetan monasteries. In effect, the ‘head monk’ is a state operative who denies the religion itself Tibetan monks in exile hold a … Continue reading →

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Turkey hints at intervening to create Syrian enclave

March 16th, 2012

by admin Posted on March 16, 2012

Turkey has threatened to intervene in Syria to create an enclave for some of the 500,000 refugees who have been pouring across its border to escape a savage war of retribution against rebel forces Syrian rebel fighters battling against Assad … Continue reading →

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Poisoned chalice of right to kill destroys a democracy

March 11th, 2012

by admin Posted on March 11, 2012

Illegal assassination is the poisoned chalice of one of history’s most vaunted democracies. The High Noon power of the American sheriff, to shoot to kill the outlaw in the local saloon or corral, is being handed over to a blind … Continue reading →

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Right to be revived raised in UK death of wife, 63

March 11th, 2012

by admin Posted on March 11, 2012

If there is a right to life, is there also a right to know about options on hospital do-not-resuscitatate orders? The issue of the right of a patient to know when an order not to resuscitate is made has … Continue reading →

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