fahrenheit451:073

You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. That's what's so wonderful about capitalism. Especially the serious, grown-up institutions of Global finance and those who oversee them. When all the needless economic pain and hardship inflicted upon millions is over and done with, when all the attendant , negative-qualitative impacts on civil society have been duly inflicted as a sort of de-facto collective punishment on a nation's citizens; when ALL is done it turns out that it really was a complete and utter balls-up from the very beginning. Or as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Daily-We're lovin'Global Usurer-Capitalism-telegraph writes:-

IMF admits disastrous love affair with the euro, apologises for the immolation of Greece

 

28 JULY 2016 • 8:38PM

The International Monetary Fund’s top staff misled their own board, made a series of calamitous misjudgments in Greece, became euphoric cheerleaders for the euro project, ignored warning signs of impending crisis, and collectively failed to grasp an elemental concept of currency theory. 

This is the lacerating verdict of the IMF’s top watchdog on the Fund’s tangled political role in the eurozone debt crisis, the most damaging episode in the history of the Bretton Woods institutions. 

Many documents were prepared outside the regular established channels; written documentation on some sensitive matters could not be locatedIEO report

It describes a “culture of complacency”, prone to “superficial and mechanistic” analysis,  and traces a shocking break-down in the governance of the IMF, leaving it unclear who is ultimately in charge of this extremely powerful organisation. 

The report by the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) goes above the head of the managing director, Christine Lagarde. It answers solely to the board of executive directors, and those from Asia and Latin America are clearly incensed at the way EU insiders used the Fund to rescue their own rich currency union and banking system.

The three main bail-outs for Greece, Portugal, and Ireland were unprecedented in scale and character. The trio were each allowed to borrow over 2,000 percent of their allocated quota – more than three times the normal limit – and accounted for 80pc of all lending by the Fund between 2011 and 2014.

...            
You can't make all that up. It belies the otherwise unimaginable bounds of speculative fiction. Paul Erdman, back in the '70's wrote a couple of international financial thrillers along similar lines. This mea culpa from the IMF is that preposterous. Even within the hegemonic dominant ideological constraints and norms of the IMF, what the hell were the Asian and Latin American executive directors doing? Minding their bankrolled exotic lifestyles?
On the other hand, taking a somewhat longer term view of this imbroglio and its ramifications, one might surmise that one helluva blow has been landed against the system.And that is to be welcomed.The only pity is that the bastards will, no doubt, be able to worm their way out of it,again.

fahrenheit451:072

Too often we search for complex and detailed reasons in order to help us come to terms with and explain events as reported by the Media. George Orwell in his seminal, " 1984 ", has the Party official O'Brien explain to the novel's chief protagonist, Winston Smith the following:-

“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

The recent spate of widely reported terrorist-attributed atrocities in Germany and France, has everyone groping around in the dark, trying in vain, to grasp hold of an identifiably rational explanation as to why such murderous onslaughts are being perpetrated in the first place. Sensationally horrific as they are proving to be, these disparate occurences are , in terms of order of magnitude, almost as nothing when compared to the ISIS/DAESH-claimed car bombings and suicide bombings that have become a part of the daily routine in Syria, Iraq,Turkey and Afghanistan. The object of terror is terror. Cutting a Priest's throat whilst he is at prayer in front of the Altar is for many an unthinkable abomination. And as these proliferate in number and intensity, the response of governments and the political class throughout the West remains ineffectual to the point of deliberate indolence. They, along with the corporate media and commentariat have been hoist by their own petard of multi-culti PC. 

When the great stampede of western-born,supposedly " radicalised " Muslims got under way to Syria, to join ISIS/DAESH, Western governments ought to have allowed everyone last one of them to go! And upon their departure stripped them of their citizenship and outlawed their return to the country from which they departed. Simple, elegant. And so it goes, victory in any given conflict goes invariably to the side that fucks up the least. And at the moment it's way too close to call.

fahrenheit451:071

A week or so ago, members of the Turkish armed forces attempted to stage a coup d’etat against their country’s democratically elected government.Their attempt ended in failure and ignominy.The Coup’s plotters, instigators and participants will be severely punished. President Erdogan wasted very little time in declaring a State of Emergency and commencing a rigorous purge, not only of the military but also the civil service and higher education establishment. Quite why the western corporate media might find any of this distasteful or inopportune or somehow morally repulsive, is more to do with Western governments’ fatuous posturing rather than the necessary demands of power and realpolitik. It was the Russian intelligence services that tipped Erdogan off about the imminent actions of the plotters. That in itself has a certain irony about it, given that Turkey is NATO’s regional bulwark and supposedly a partner of for instance the US,UK etc in matters of security and intelligence. All to the good for Russia and its position and standing. A European Union heading inexorably toward existential oblivion has just had its progress toward that most hoped for of goals considerably speeded up by Britain voting for Brexit. A weakened EU = a weakened NATO. In the USA, civil society has, again gone through a series of convulsions surrounding the legitimacy of Police violence perceived to be disproportionately directed at its Afro-American populace.A weakened US= a weakened NATO. A weakened NATO = a weakened US. The failed coup in Turkey is , to borrow from Orwell’s ” 1984 “, Doubleplusgood! as it affects the continuing shennanigans over Daesh in Syria and Iraq, themselves the engineered creations of the neocon warmongers of the US State Department,the NATO military and its regional satrapies; they as a whole are also immeasurably weakened.

fahrenheit451:070

Nearly 4 weeks after EU Referendum Day, the forces of Reaction & Remain continue to seek more ways to stymie and/or annul the decision of the UK Electorate to vote to leave the EU ( aka Brexit ). Petitions,demonstrations, legal actions,organised online forums, academics and prelates, commentators on every specialism - finance, foreign relations, international trade, have been brought to bear against the carrying out of the decision to leave the EU. Where does this heinous misbehaviour stem from, who are the main culprits? The facts are that Tory MPs were split roughly 50-50 on the issue, whereas Labour MPs were 90-10 for Remain.And given the enormous pro-Leave votes in a huge number of nominally Labour " seats ", it was #LabourInForBritain who were by some considerable distance wide of the mark. Not only were they not singing from the same hymn-sheet as their " traditional voters ", LabourInForBritain weren't even standing in the same pews in the same church as their core voters. And that is a good thing, irrespective of any other partisan ideological considerations, if indeed it can  still be argued that there are any of any merit left. Once upon a time matters such as Treason and Sedition meant something, the words and what they signified resonated with awe and gravitas. A fortnight or so ago, a pop-up campaign - The 48% - organised a protest rally in London.One of their keynote speakers, Labour MP for Tottenham, David Lammy actually preached Sedition and sought to incite the crowd against our lawful government and its acceptance of the EU referendum result. The metropolitan domiciled, self-referencing bien pensant with their faux-bourgeois manners and social affectations and faddish prejudices have been around for a very long time indeed. And it is something of a meta-historical phenomenon that they choose precisely this juncture in the overarching historical narrative to once again display and articulate in an unrestrained, undiplomatic fashion their utter contempt, loathing and hatred of the majority within British society.

Here's what I emailed to my local newspaper the other day, perhaps it'll get published, perhaps not.

Clearly our current MP for Wakefield has lost confidence in the electorate on whom she is dependent. It seems that our current MP is far from " chuffed " with the democratic and binding decision of the electorate. That's a pity because in over 40 years of community and Trades Union activism I have never witnessed such a mendacious and fundamentally dishonest campaign than that waged by the Remain block during The EU Referendum. Bear in mind that ‪#‎LabourInForBritain‬ provided Remain's pivotal,leading role with some 200 Labour MPs declaring for Remain. It is not the electorate that has to explain itself to its elected representatives,but rather it behoves those such as Mary Creagh to make an unreserved and unconditional apology to the Electorate.

Will any MP who supported and canvassed for Remain actually apologise? probably not. Will Brexit be declared null and void? probably not.

FOOTNOTE :- There is a General Election scheduled for May 2020, once invoked by the PM via Royal prerogative, Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty envisages a timeframe of 2 years for all subsequent negotiations. This government will not go into an election with that unresolved.

fahrenheit451:069

The Petainists of #LabourInForBritain  who played such  a pivotal and decisive role in the  #VoteRemain Goebbelsian campaign to keep the UK in perpetual feudal servitude to the European Union, are at present engaged in a series of co-ordinated ploys that constitute a brazen attempt to annul the result of the EU referendum. Central to their attempts is a petition supposedly signed by over 4 million actual citizens and registered voters within the UK that calls on parliament to in effect ignore the result of the EU referendum. They shall of course fail, again. Brexit is real and it is going ahead. The European Union is on the high road to the abyss. Take for instance,the EU's utterly insane drive to become an empire with requisite diplomatic reach and geopolitical ambitions. This gleaned Thursday 14 July,  from the Serbian B.92 news platform:-

McAllister, the German MEP from the CDU party, who is currently visiting Belgrade where he late on Wednesday met with PM-designate Aleksandar Vucic, further stressed that the task of Serbia was to align its security and foreign policy with that of the EU "also when it comes to Russia."
Ahead of a conference in Belgrade, dubbed, "The European Union’s Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy and the Western Balkans," McAllister told the website,

"Serbia has traditionally strong economic, social and cultural ties with Russia. However, Russia unilaterally changes European borders in order to try to expand its influence and expand its control over parts of territories of neighboring countries. This is one of the reasons, why Serbia needs to make strong efforts in aligning its foreign and security policy to that of the EU, including the policy on Russia,"

It seems as though Germany is still unhappy with the outcome of WW1 and is campaiging for a re-run. Quite how they're going to finagle the other 26 member states of the increasingly bankrupt and dysfunctional hybrid imperium to foot the bill for all this putative adventurism and Russia-baiting, is of course something that they would collectively need to consider before cozening poor battered Serbia into becoming the EU's and NATO's tethered goat.

fahrenheit451:068

The outcome of History and its epoch defining events are not determined by nor somehow subject to petty bourgeois norms of civility.And yes the British wannabe, self-delusional, aspiring, all consuming, grasping, venal middle class really are entirely irrelevant to the entire process of Historical materialism and its outcomes and developments. The Sea Change in British and wider global politics and the balance of Class forces thereof, which occurred during the night of Thursday 23rd.June into the early hours of Friday 24th. June are irrevocable. The heretofore seemingly impregnable hegemonic dominance of politics as usual and its accompanying Media-driven narrative suffered a catastrophic aneurysm. This is how History is forged, to conflate Bismarck's dictum , decisions made at the ballot box are those of blood and iron ( though originally he uttered iron and blood ). And that is what, in the most rudimentary terms has caused not only the British-domiciled,but also the wider global capitalist, ruling elites and their political classes to shit themselves in full view of the public. Not inconsiderable numbers actually are in mortal fear of the sound of the tumbrils clattering down their leafy little suburb coming to take them away. Schadenfreude! No amount of venal, self-aggrandising huffing and puffing and attempted,orchestrated pseudo-intellectual intimidation of the People via the weaponising of pristine empirical facts and figures is going to make a blind bit of difference. An epidemic of existential dread is sweeping across the Ruling elites and their servile political toady class. What the Occupy movement had so fervently striven for and what other countless protest movements and civic indignation had longed to see take place right in front of their eyes as evidence of the 99%'s integral role in being the fulcrum and determinant in the liberation of mankind from Usurer-Capitalist Tyranny and enslavement, is now happening! Revolutionaries are engineers tasked with the demolition of the prevailing capitalist order, they are not economists.Hopefully,decades from now when the dust has eventually for the most part settled from this Krakatoa event,the word economist will be as arcane and obscurantist as that of leech-doctor.

fahrenheit451:067

Well, at least it breaks the monotony. News of the UK's  troop deployment ( as part of a wider NATO strategy to foment a military conflict with Russia ) to the turnip fields of two of the EU's aggressive beggar satrapies of Poland and Estonia really does define what genuine incredulity feels like. The BBC trumpets, a la classic Vaudeville  Petomaine the following, in easy to grasp bullet points in case you're too thick to comprehend a longer narrative form.

Hundreds of UK troops are to be sent to Poland and Estonia as part of the Nato response to concerns over Russia.

A 500-strong battalion will be deployed to Estonia and 150 troops will be based in Poland to "reassure" these countries, the defence secretary said.

Michael Fallon said it aims to "deter Russia from any further aggression".

Eastern Nato countries "feel enormous pressure from Russia doing large exercises on the border, flying over their airspace and so on," he said.

"This [the deployment] is something Nato's been planning for a while, that countries like Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia have made clear that they want.

The units - led by the UK, the US, Germany and Canada - are due to be in place in early 2017.

UK armed forces are already deployed in more than 80 countries across the world in a range of roles, including 450 soldiers in Afghanistan and more than 275 military training personnel in Iraq.

*Mr Cameron, who is due to announce the deployment at a Nato summit in Warsaw later, said: "This summit is a chance for us to reiterate our strong support for Ukraine and our other eastern allies to deter Russian aggression.

"Actions speak louder than words and the UK is proud to be taking the lead role, deploying troops across Eastern Europe.

"It is yet another example of the UK leading in Nato."...here endeth the pious sermon.

*Cameron you might recall is the same Cameron whom my blog,historically caricatured as The Chief Toilet Attendant of The Greater European Union's Northwest maritime province of Yu-Kay. And we all know how that ended. So, la Grand Petomaine's  record is already 0-1 and falling.

BBC Radio 4's flagship  Today programme on July 8 even featured a rather long and laborious p.r. exercise by epicly challenged bipolar Foreign Secretary Hammond,who as is customary spouted an immense load of idiosyncratic verbiage that contained repeated phrases about  Bwitain's leading role in NATO.No-one  whilst he was on air at the Beeb had the perspicacity to administer him his meds,which may have mitigated the listener's suffering and to a lesser extent any fleeting compassion for Hammond's endemic stupidity.

Deliberately under-resourced,shabbily treated,badly commanded, idiotically led by ex-public schoolboy buffoons a la 14-18, the British Military are currently 0-2 with their performance record in actually doing anything worthwhile whatsoever. Mowing down unarmed Irish civilians is no longer in their training manuals.Alas, since they were getting quite proficient at it at one stage.

My views on NATO match precisely my vindicated by History view on the european union; I utterly hate, loathe and despise everything it does and everything it stands for. Not only is the eu dead and buried, NATO isn't far behind.The grave beckons. As an arm of US Global Imperialism it is, NATO once again finds itself in the somewhat ironic position of being wholly impotent and redundant as a hydra-headed armed insurgency is again raging across  urban population centres of The Beast itself.

schaden...freude!!!!

fahrenheit451:066

It's not even a full fortnight since the glorious result of the EU Referendum and already the World is a brighter, happier much more cheerful a place then many would've dared to imagine as Polling stations closed at 10pm on Thursday 23 June. #Brexit finds us amid the fratricidal ideologically driven mutual carnage both within Conservative and Labour parties, as well as a mob of superannuated former undergrads with right-on views playing at Sedition and wanting to overthrow constitutional governance in the UK. The self-styled " 48% " ,all dressed down to mingle with ordinary folk as is the custom among the privileged metropolitan-domiciled,Oxbridge educated elite;they want to riot vicariously and posture loudly and articulately that they're hard done to.One or two stalking horses from Tory & Labour are despatched to do stand up demagogue routines on their rostrums. They spout a gutless version of actual Sedition and claim the role of martyrs for the cause; the cause they steered unerringly onto the rocks and to inexorable abject defeat. But the piece de resistance, is the reignited banking crisis about to take down the entire Italian economy. Here's what  " Zero Hedge " reports; I just love it when Corporate Capitalist Money men talk explicitly. Here's the unexpurgated cert:18 original.

With all eyes distratcted by the post-Brexit euphoria, the last week has seen a far more existential crisis accelerating in Europe. Italy's banking system is in tatters (from a EUR40bn bailout 6 days ago, to EUR150 emergency support 3 days ago, to a bank bailout and chatter of further support from pension funds Friday) but, in what seems like a clear admission that things are really bad, The FT reports that Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi is prepared to defy the EU and unilaterally pump billions of euros into its troubled banking system if it comes under severe systemic distress, a last-resort move that would smash through the bloc’s nascent regime for handling ailing banks.

As we noted previously, Brexit will be just the scapegoat used by Renzi and Italy to circumvent any specific eurozone prohibitions. And if it fails, all Renzi has to do is hint at a referendum of his own. Then watch as Merkel scrambles to allow Italy to do whatever it wants, just to avoid the humiliation of a potential "Italeave."

And sure enough, as The FT reports, Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister, is determined to intervene with public funds if necessary despite warnings from Brussels and Berlin over the need to respect rules that make creditors rather than taxpayers fund bank rescues, according to several officials and bankers familiar with their plans.

 

 

The threat has raised alarm among Europe’s regulators, who fear such a brazen intervention would devastate the credibility of the union’s newly implemented banking rule book during its first real test. In the race to find workable solutions, Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief, has laid out options for Rome to address its banking problems without breaking the bail-in principles of Europe’s banking union. 

Italy is the eurozone’s biggest vulnerability following the shock outcome of the UK vote to leave the EU, with bank stocks plunging by a third. Concerns are building before the outcome of bank stress test results due this month and a constitutional referendum in Italy in early October, on which Mr Renzi has wagered his job. Citi has described the referendum as “probably the single biggest risk on the European political landscape this year outside the UK”.

After several of its ideas on intervention were rebuffed, Rome is considering whether to act alone. “We are willing to do whatever is necessary [to defend the banks], and do not rule out acting unilaterally, although that would only be as a last resort,” said one person familiar with the government’s thinking. European officials fear any Italian intervention would carry high risks, opening a battle over illegal state support that would put off private investors.

Angela Merkel, German chancellor , last week rebuffed Italy’s request for a suspension of state aid and bail-in rules in order to recapitalise its banks. Benoit Coeure, a senior European Central Bank official, has said any suspension of bail-in rules would spell the end of the banking union “as we know it”.

Mr Renzi has bristled at suggestions he is ignoring rules, saying he will not be “lectured by the school teacher”.
And #Brexit won! and the reverberations will go on and on and on and it might incentivise our next dumb P.M to get the hell on with it and invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. Who knows, I couldn't care less ,we won the Big One!

fahrenheit451:065

In the belated, though nevertheless timely and apposite sequel, " Independence Day:Resurgence ".The heavily outgunned forces of Earth are called upon to battle an enemy they believed had been beaten 20 years earlier.Only they hadn't;they'd simply been planning their revenge. And so it is with that insidious nest of vipers the REMAIN campaigners, in particular #LabourInForBritain - the 200 or so MPs whose other hobby is to overthrow by extraordinary means outside of their own party's rules the popularly elected leader of their party! Treachery is a habit,cynical betrayal and an insatiable Borgian appetite for cunning and perfidy are standard job requirements for being a Labour MP. Or indeed a Tory MP or any other kind of MP as long as your parliamentary representation is spacious enough to allow the cultivation of factions. The fratricidal struggle engulfing the governing Party at present was in any event inevitable give Cameron's playing a losing hand in the Referendum. The only sliver of merit and indeed saving grace of the Tory imbroglio as opposed to the much wider implications of Labour's stygian machinations,is that all Tory MPs have accepted that #Brexit won and is now fully go. Labour by contrast has do no such thing. Firstly,the Tories split almost evenly over the Referendum, whereas Labour MPs went 90:10 Remain. Bummer. Not only did #LabourIn weaponise the murder of Jo Cox MP,with audacious,cold-blooded cynicism but they've followed it up post-referendum with a Goebbels-like media campaign reporting on a mass outbreak of what are now called " hate crimes ". Those " crimes " and the murder of Jo Cox both being attributed as directly linked to stemming from the rhetoric of the #VoteLeave campaign!  And so it goes.. whilst the Tory Pary quite rightly teeters on the verge of oblivion, Labour has already fully embraced its own predestined Historic fate. And in the movie, " Independence Day:Resurgence ",that actually premiered and I went to see,on June 23rd. the good guys overcame the odds,again.