Earth’s degradation threatens major health gains: study Agence France-Presse
The Most Dangerous Man in America TomDispatch. On Nixon.
Uber fined $7.3 million for keeping info from California regulators Times Free Press. EM: “In theory this could cost Uber its license to operate in CA, but I expect a gaggle of high-paid ‘Uberlawyers’ to file whatever it takes in motions to prevent that.”
SeaWorld accused of infiltrating animal rights group in California Reuters (EM)
Shoppers disappointed in much-hyped ‘Prime Day’ sales Times Free Press (EM)
Three Sydney Hooters restaurants go into administration after superannuation claims Sydney Morning Herald. EM again cannot resist: “I believe the correct phrase is ‘…go tits up’.”
Markets Aren’t Buying China’s Rosy GDP Claims Bloomberg
Why China’s stock market bubble was always bound to burst Guardian
Grexit?
Greece, Its Back to the Wall, Adopts Austerity Steps New York Times
Greece bailout: Protesters clash with police at anti-austerity march as parliament debates bailout ABC (Oregoncharles)
Greek cleaners swept out of work as Tsipras’s defiance fades Financial Times. This is nuts: “Most of the job losses were those on fixed-term contracts, such as cleaners and administrative staff. Their positions were often taken by people hired through outsourcing companies or third-party employers.”
How bad are things for the people of Greece? BBC. Scroll down to the chart “People experiencing severe deprivation”
Merkel’s tough tactics prompt criticism Financial Times
German muscle threatens European solidarity BBC
Greece deal under intense assault MacroBusiness. Note that this may be out of date. Even though an IMF leaked document said that it would be hard to make the new funding for Greece work without debt haircuts, Lagarde on CNN stuck to her line that that the IMF has always wanted debt relief for Greece and that no-haircut strategies could do the trick. The staff was hugely upset in 2010 when the IMF got involved in Greece and it is apparently even more upset that the IMF is about to get in deeper. It thus looks plausible that the report, which had not been approved by the board, was not an authorized leak.
Latest IMF debt relief push baffles eurozone creditors Financial Times
Lagarde sees hope for Greek debt Agence France-Presse
What Mr Tsipras learned about bargaining power in the EU Europe on the Strand
Greece’s National Pastime: Tax-Dodging Daily Beast. Isabel PS: “An interesting insight. “what makes the ENFEA so hated is that it is a tax for MERE ownership of property”. Tax collection can improve very quickly (it happened in Portugal and also in Slovakia, I think). But coming from this low base it must be very difficult.”
Lose-Lose: Pushing Greece Out of Euro Is Costlier Than Write-Off Bloomberg (reslic)
When Will Greek Looting and Austerity End? Ian Welsh (furzy mouse)
The problem of Greece is not only a tragedy. It is a lie. John Pilger
Ukraine./Russia
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
U.S. has yet to notify 21.5 million data breach victims: officials Reuters. EM: “‘[chime] You’ve got (black)mail.'”
Filmmaker Laura Poitras has been detained 50 times. Now she’s suing to find out why. Vox
Imperial Collapse Watch
Why doesn’t US Media interview Real Allies on American Policy Juan Cole (resilc). Drumroll…because we have none!
Army’s Anthropology Experiment Ends in Defeat Bloomberg (resilc)
Trade Traitors
US lawmakers worry over Malaysia TIP report rating Bangkok Post (furzy mouse)
Filings reveal cash cow campaigns in US Financial Times
What Campaign Filings Won’t Show: Super PACs’ Growing Sway New York Times
How Trump Destroyed the GOP’s Best-Laid Plans New York Magazine (resilc)
After Years of Drought, Wildfires Rage in California New York Times. Lots of dramatic photos.
This Man Took On Fox News And Became A Hero To His City ThinkProgress. Chuck L: “Every self-respecting person, not to mention politician, should respond to ambushes by Faux News staff as this man did.”
How the plunging price of oil has set off a new global contest Washington Post
Obama Administration Finds New Way to Let Criminal Banks Avoid Consequences Intercept (resilc)
Class Warfare
Wisconsin asks federal court to clarify food stamp drug testing law Reuters. EM: “Even better, make the food stamp recipients pay for the cost of the drug tests. Ka-ching!”
Why America’s workforce is shrinking and Europe’s isn’t CNN. The excuses are not convincing.
Behind the Slow Pace of Wage Growth Big Picture (resilc)
The Age of Megaprojects Project Syndicate. You need to read get well into the article before it becomes apparent that “megarprojects” are structured in a manner to facilitate looting.
Obama to announce project for more broadband in public housing Reuters (EM)
Antidote du jour. From Stephen L: “Gorgeous wapiti buck. Bow Valley Parkway, Banff National Park, June 2015”
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
61 comments
Comments are closed.
When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging. Tsipras is still digging, meaning the suffering of Greeks is being extended decades into the future. Grexit is the only way forward.
They talk about more can-kicking.
Is it a win for Greece, with a one time extension of 100 years, and payments suspended for a few years, to let inflation do the work?
Greece needs to run fiscal surpluses to get out of this hole. No amount of debt relief will do it on its own.
It’s like going to a car dealer and they work backwards.
“How much can you afford a month?”
And you walk out with a 10 year payment plan for an old, beat up 1957 Trabant.
If they suspend payments for a number of years, reduce rates and stretch them out to 100 years, (not that they will), it will give Greece time to run surpluses (depending on how long the payment suspension is). A hundred years is a long time (again, not saying they will get this).
My question is , would that be a win for Greece?
I have to apologize to a reader, but we have had problems with comments crashing the site, and a reader left a comment that did just that. I don’t want to be more specific. I don’t think it was malign in intent. The reader who did that will know who he/she is (comment @ 7:35 AM). Please DO NOT repost it. Thanks.
And yes, we have looked into this very rare but nasty anomaly and we do not have security holes or other issues. This is not an exploit of a known WP vulnerability. It’s more like spooks in the machine. Since our moderation software acts more and more like Skynet, it should not be surprising that we have other oddball anomalies. We run a ginormous commments database so that is at least part of the problem. Per a WP guru: “We talk about “2% WordPress” quite a bit—the code practices that are acceptable for the 98% just don’t work for the 2%.” But we don’t have the budget to code to that 2% standard. Sites in that 2% include the monster sites like HuffPo and TechCrunch. There is very little 2% talent and they can hoover it all up. The flip side is NC is a very simple site. Our big problem is how hard we run WP, which is famous for scaling badly (the price of its feature richness) and not complexity of the site.
Please also DO NOT discuss this issue or make “helpful” suggestions. We’ve done considerable work on this issue. I know many readers would like to assist, but this is one area where I do not want further discussion. I will delete further comments on this matter so please save yourself the effort. Thanks for your patience.
Happy note. >> I made some comments a little back about flash ads and crashes. That seems to have cleared up. Thanks for whatever you folks have done to help that along. My coffee just doesn’t taste right without my morning dose of NC Links.
I started today’s session of beating myself around the head with a shovel with Helmer’s piece on the price of truth/silence in the Imperium’s assault on the Russians. Then down the list of today’s links. Just in that selection of what’s shakin’ in the world, there’s fifteen more line items in the grand and growing list of Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.
But people who read here know all that. Lambert derides lack of agency. Bastille Day is now a street fest, with plastic beads and cupcakes as the media of transaction? Hardly anybody reads stuff like “The Role of the Crowd in the French Revolution”?
A small group of people combined to catalyze neoliberalism, that cancerously adaptive pathology, into existence. Lots of effort by people of good will (who have not succumbed, against all temptation, to what Helmer painted in his piece — at least, bless and confirm them, so far), effort spent on analyzing the disease process, which seems to have a fairly simple virus that infects the limbic systems of the vast number of susceptibles with that insatiable MOREism disease.
Simple question, with maybe no answer, given my own tiny perception of how the mechanism works: Is there a counter-virus that is not equally fatal to our species?
Figure out the DNA structure and Krebs cycle of the political economy, great, and then apply some kind of cure? Or is it just inevitable, that enormous K-T event that seems to loom? Not, I guess, that in that immensity of which we are a tiny part, which just is, it may matter – our modern poets can imagine a Death Star and the breezy disintegration of entire planets to congeal the power of the Dark Side…
“Figure out the DNA structure and Krebs cycle of the political economy, great, and then apply some kind of cure? ”
Aren’t pictures of cute kittens good enough for you? Or are you some kind of a perfectionist?
One can live surprisingly well with just the modest academic impedimenta of the professional economist: a spreadsheet, a jukebox and a bar stool.
My new home has a flashing warning sign…
Don’t forget the half full half empty glass of soma.
Two out of three ain’t bad either.
Thank you for today’s antidote du jour. What a magnificent elk in the early morning light in a beautiful part of the world!
Yes, that’s a nice BULL elk (‘buck’ refers to deer, at least where I’m from).
Elk are magnificent creatures, but best to keep your distance. They, like moose, have been known to attack not only people but cars. And they can do some real damage.
And likely they will attack Republican cars as well as Democrat cars as well.
This is why we not only have to be green ourselves, but also persuade others to be too. We will answer to Nature as one species.
You are correct.
My great-uncles (may they rest in peace) used to poach in Jasper National Park, winters during the Great Depression. Jasper NP is contiguous to Banff NP. When not poaching, they would sneak into Miette Hot Springs (in Jasper NP) for a good soak.
This picture and caption are from the Alberta Wildlife FB group
When people ask me why the pending TPP/TTIP/TISA regime will be so disastrous, my answer is not that it will give the transnational kleptocracy carte blanche to do whatever it wants. That has pretty much already happened. No, the real disaster is that the new regime will obliterate even the illusion of successful local resistance to kleptocratic power, as exemplified by the recent stand taken by Santa Cruz: http://www.allgov.com/usa/ca/news/where-is-the-money-going/santa-cruz-county-slashes-business-with-five-big-felonious-banks-150707?news=856899
We desperately need to keep the idea of resistance alive! How to do so, in this increasingly totalitarian world, is the most pressing question that we face.
“…the real disaster [of the rigged trade pacts] is that the new regime will obliterate even the illusion of successful local resistance to kleptocratic power.”
Obliterating the current mass-illusion of democracy (and Obama’s Democratic Party as progressive) may well be crucial to real reform or revolution. As my dad would say, be glad you’re disillusioned; it’s best not to harbor illusions. Obama’s newest rigged trade pacts may finally overreach and shatter the Matrix, bringing lots of people out blinking in the sunshine.
It’s nice to see Yves featured in your link.
Yes, I really liked seeing the NC reference myself!
Hmm… If I understand some of the parts leaked about these “trade” agreements, couldn’t the foreign banks sue the city of Santa Cruz for loss of current & potential future profits due to the boycott (if the agreements were in place)?
No (silver lining?), they sue the Federal Gov’t – which made the agreements, after all. I think it was Tankus told us the city wouldn’t be involved. The Feds would then have to somehow make the city change its policy, or just print the money. (It also applies only to FOREIGN corps, which the banks at issue aren’t. Yet. Could be Deutschebank, though.)
I see this as an opportunity for local and state goverments to practice civil disobedience. Under our “federal” system, the Feds may have no recourse. At the least, it causes a big political stink that’s hard to overlook.
Wouldn’t a domestic firm just have to create an overseas “cutout” cardboard-replica foreign subsidiary or partner or something and have “it” sue for profits “it” would have made in America if not for some law or regulation or something? And if judgement were won against the FedGov, the FedGov would use all its tools to torture and extort the targeted sub-FedGov jurisdiction into repealing that law or withdrawing that regulation. One supposes the DC FedRegime officeholders might also raise taxes against the lower class majority to raise the money to pay the ISDS suit fines.
The only thing a belligerent protectionist movement-load of people could do would be to try and get “profit-stopping” laws and regulations passed and written in many different sub-Federal jurisdictions all over America so as to invite hundreds and then thousands of ISDS “suits”. The goal would be to “heighten the contradictions” and recruit rising numbers of Americans into a posture of active aggressive hatred towards the Corporate Global Plantationist Free Trade FedRegime.
The Disastrous Loan Deal That Shows Wall Street Still Has a Wild West
JPMorgan Chase & Co. knew federal authorities were investigating the largest drug-testing lab in the U.S.
But the New York-based bank didn’t share that information about Millennium Health LLC with the people who were about to lend the company $1.8 billion in April 2014 because Millennium said it wasn’t material, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
In most markets, such an omission would be regarded as unethical or worse. But JPMorgan was playing in the $800 billion market for leveraged loans, where just about anything goes — and often does.
The case of Millennium is the latest example of the pitfalls in a market where no one regulates trading. Borrowers can limit who can access their financials, control the type of data they get and even blacklist certain investors from ever buying the loan.
Two loan investors, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly, also said neither JPMorgan nor Millennium mentioned the probe when the loan was pitched.
“It’s very, very frustrating from the perspective that you don’t know how much more they know that they’re not telling you,” said Shannan Murphy, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s, referring to San Diego-based Millennium. “You can see why they might be sensitive surrounding talking around the events going on at that time.”
Lender Fallout
JPMorgan wasn’t required by law to disclose the probe to potential lenders because Millennium, controlled by private-equity firm TA Associates, told the bank it wasn’t material at the time, said the person, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.
JPMorgan spokeswoman Jessica Francisco declined to comment.The borrowing funded a $1.27 billion dividend to Millennium’s management team and TA Associates, which own the company. It also paid off $195 million of debt that TA Associates held.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-16/jpmorgan-s-little-secret-on-a-loan-deal-that-went-very-wrong
i knew love was blind but debt investors, too?…non disclosure is now kosher?
Re: Obama Administration Lets Criminal Banks Avoid Consequences
Gee Obama suddenly channeling his ‘inner-progressive’, finally as his term of office approaches its end. (this couldn’t be election year posturing, naw)
– Pardoned some pot dealers who got life sentences.
– Opens relations with Cuba
– Now cheap broadband for the poor.
But of course when it comes to Handouts to Banksters, Obama is the Grift That Keeps On Giving.
No, it wouldn’t be “election year posturing”. He has no more elections left to run in and he does not care about the outcome of anybody else’s elections. It could be narcissism-based legacy-burnishing. It could also be “cooling the marks” as described on this blog many months ago.
John Pilger’s takedown of Syriza’s breathtaking unconditional surrender is superb. In delivering most of Greece’s public commonwealth to an international plutocracy, this amounts to a smash-n-grab with inside help, much like the Obama regime. This is disaster capitalism…doing the Lloyd’s work.
“doing the Lloyd’s work.”
Yep! The Bank Fiend is large and in charge right now– I do hope you’re optimistic prediction (in comment above), of matrix-shattering over-reach waking people up to reality, actually comes to pass.
I tend to take Ian Welsh’s perspective, the advantage being that nobody has to be villified, though the way they have gone about things is mindbogglingly cruel. I can’t help feeling that this deal is going to crash and burn, or the next one will, and at least Iceland didn’t lose the ability to have parliamentary proceedings, which might be the sine qua non for any country to survive.
I understand at least some of Ian Welsh’s commenters to be suggesting that Varoufakis in particular and Syriza in general saw themselves as trying to do missionary work with the other EuroZone powerholders and authorities; to educate them about a higher and better way to operate Euro Zonistan as a socially beneficial win-win-win body pollitical-economic for all its inhabitants.
If I understand correctly some of Welsh’s commenters on that score, what do people here think of that interpretation of what the Syrizans were trying to do with their “Economic Tutoring Mission to the Savages of Euro Europe”?
Re Army’s anthropology experiment ends in defeat. How surprising that graft was the only verifiable outcome of this experiment. Or not. I’m sure that the concept of applying social science to achieve military objectives sounded great on paper, but it was bound to fail because at this stage there aren’t many people left in the world who are not on NGO payrolls who believe that America stands for peace, freedumb, democracy, and prosperity. Absent faith in the US’ intentions, the “hearts and minds” efforts are doomed to fail. Moreover, the faith of locals can’t be bought or created through PR. It can only be created by wholesale change in US policies, and we all know this is not going to happen any time soon.
I found it sad that the author called the program’s name “Orwellian”, only to proceed to call the Army’s Civil Affairs branch “warrior diplomats.” War is Peace, comrades! Ok, so he was quoting the Army, but still. He fell for a PR play by Army bureaucracy to shift dollars from civilian contractors to Civil Affairs, and touted its untapped “potential”. Yes, the Civil Affairs can do some nice things for locals on micro level, but graft is just as pervasive in Civil Affairs projects (see Iraq) , and we still have the larger problem of US government policies as a whole. So shifting dollars from civilian contractors to Civil Affairs is bound to fail.
Take the impending stationing of US troops and hardware in BG. Polling reveals that 71% of the locals oppose it. It’s a combination of how ineptly the reveal was handles by the government, which led to the perception that BG sovereignty exists only in theory, and unwillingness to become a staging ground for the brewing conflict between the US and Russia, and thus a target. Last month an Army Civil Affairs unit met with the Bulgarian American Association in a Bulgarian Orthodox church in Chicago to “learn more about Bulgaria” and to inform the association of all the great things it has planned for Europe and for Bulgaria. See http://www.eurochicago.com/2015/06/us-army-baa-chicago/. It was information gathering mission to fine tune strategy, and I am curious to find out how they intend to overcome the popular discontent in BG with the impending arrival of the US troops and materiel. The US has the corrupt elites in its pocket (the BAA also received grants from the Obama administration to “inform” the BG diaspora about the goodness that is Obamacare), but winning the hearts and minds of the population that is largely russophile is a different thing altogether. Judging by the photo they took in front of the memorial of the most beloved martyr from the fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire, the CA effort is already starting off on the wrong foot. When the population feels that BG is not a sovereign nation, that is adding insult to injury.
Acting like a proper central bank (ie one that is set up to serve the public interest)
——————
Paul De Grauwe, Vox Why the ECB should not insist on repayment of its Greek bonds
“What should the ECB do?
It would be easy for the ECB to solve this problem. The easiest way would be to write off the Geek bonds. As we have argued earlier such a write-off has no fiscal implications. It means that the circular flow of interest from Greece to the ECB and back is discontinued. In contrast, the repayment of the bonds by Greece has fiscal implications and leads to transfers from Greece to the other member countries. This is quite a perverse transfer given the sorry state of the Greek public finances.
The easy solution is hard
There is a lot of resistance against the easy solution.
First there is resistance in the ECB.
Like many central banks, it is concerned to show profits and a positive equity. These concerns, however, are misplaced and these profits and losses only have a life in the mind of accountants. Similarly, the equity position of the ECB has no real consequences and should not influence the ECB’s decision. The latter should be guided by concerns about price stability and financial stability.
Second, there is also resistance against a write-off outside the ECB because such a write-off is associated with a loss that the taxpayers, especially the hard-working German taxpayer, will have to bear.
As we have shown, this loss is purely of an accounting nature. It does not affect the other member countries. It does not imply that German taxpayers will bear a higher tax bill.
Concluding remarks
Fears, when held strongly, become a reality. One has to take these into account. Therefore it is worth considering another solution. This would consist of the ECB extending the maturity of the Greek bonds. This would lead to exactly the same economic effects (although the accounting would be different). The Greek government would continue to pay interest to the ECB, which would then dutifully return these to the Greek government. Other countries would not be affected.
Both these solutions would prevent the perverse redistribution of seigniorage from Greece to the other member states.”
Are you telling me that the ECB does not really know how money works! That observation goes along with watching Lagarde blame the victims of her IMF policy with such a lack of empathy and lack of understanding that is abysmal. Either that or she is just plain lying through her teeth. (I thought I saw her face get a little redder with shame.)
I think it’s actually hard to tell some times. Some people seem to be true believers in neo or ordo liberalism.
Some people seem to understand but find it difficult politically. FDR apparently knew he didn’t need a FICA tax for the federal govt to credit retirees accounts but thought it would fly better politically. The problem with playing these ‘games’ is that the people that really control the money strings can get away with a lot and cause infighting among the rest.
Central banks print money and are often considered lenders of last resort but we recently got this from Jens Weidmann
http://www.bis.org/review/r150713a.htm
“Central banks – although they have the means – have no mandate, in my view, to safeguard the solvency of banks and governments. That kind of implicit redistribution is a matter for governments or parliaments, if at all.”
—————-
Some people understand this very clearly but want to keep the knowledge to themselves.
“Paul Samuelson, explained in an interview with Mark Blaug (in his film on Keynes, “John Maynard Keynes: Life/Ideas/Legacy 1995″) the need to limit the knowledge of true nature of money to the priestly caste of economists.
“I think there is an element of truth in the view that the superstition that the budget must be balanced at all times [is necessary]. Once it is debunked [that] takes away one of the bulwarks that every society must have against expenditure out of control. There must be discipline in the allocation of resources or you will have anarchistic chaos and inefficiency. And one of the functions of old fashioned religion was to scare people by sometimes what might be regarded as myths into behaving in a way that the long-run civilized life requires.”
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2015/01/public-understood-money-works.html
I think it’s actually hard to tell some times. Some people seem to be true believers in neo or ordo liberalism.
Some people seem to understand but find it difficult politically. FDR apparently knew he didn’t need a FICA tax for the federal govt to credit retirees accounts but thought it would fly better politically. The problem with playing these ‘games’ is that the people that really control the money strings can get away with a lot and cause infighting among the rest.
Central banks print money and are often considered lenders of last resort but we recently got this:
Jens Weidmann: Turning points in history – how crises have changed the tasks and practice of central banks
“Central banks – although they have the means – have no mandate, in my view, to safeguard the solvency of banks and governments. That kind of implicit redistribution is a matter for governments or parliaments, if at all.”
—————-
Some people understand this very clearly but want to keep the knowledge to themselves.
“Paul Samuelson, explained in an interview with Mark Blaug (in his film on Keynes, “John Maynard Keynes: Life/Ideas/Legacy 1995″) the need to limit the knowledge of true nature of money to the priestly caste of economists.
“I think there is an element of truth in the view that the superstition that the budget must be balanced at all times [is necessary]. Once it is debunked [that] takes away one of the bulwarks that every society must have against expenditure out of control. There must be discipline in the allocation of resources or you will have anarchistic chaos and inefficiency. And one of the functions of old fashioned religion was to scare people by sometimes what might be regarded as myths into behaving in a way that the long-run civilized life requires.”
What if the Public Understood How Money Works? NEP Bill Black
That ‘profits and losses only have a life in the mind of accountants’ thing is about symbols.
And symbols have values to those who attach such values to them.
For example, money about a certain level a billionaire needs to live a decent life, to experience the world directly, for example, money used to buy professional baseball teams, or to make more money for the sake of more money, has a life only in the mind of that billionaire.
Habermas has spoken:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/16/merkel-gambling-away-germanys-reputation-over-greece-says-habermas
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31912-grexit-or-jubilee-how-greek-debt-can-be-annulled
Ellen Brown on Truthout, her current article is at the above link.
Japan re-militarizes:
Another triumph for the Peace Laureate. Backing Japan against China — brilliant!
Asia is our backyard, comrades.
Once Nippon remilitarizes fully, how long will it take them to go nuclear? They do have the industrial capacity and a good deal of reprocessible fissionable materials lying around. Then the South Koreans would want some too, unless they manage a rapprochement with North Korea. (Poor Kim, I suspect his days are numbered.)
Maybe they can get some ready-made Little Boys and Fat Mans (a Catholic priest thing with them?) with vendor financing.
They don’t need them, they can just weaponize Tepco
Are you suggesting some sort of “back door” diplomacy?
The French helped the Israelis with the Zion Bomb, so why not help Dai Nippon with theirs?
The Japanese need no “assistance”, they have no material or technological barriers to building nuclear weapons, if they haven’t already.
A “re-militarized” Japan seems like a very bad idea. My impressions of the Orient, circa 1986, were that none of the nations around Japan have forgotten or will soon forget their occupations by Japanese troops. As for the Japanese, they seem locked in thinking of themselves as a victim of the American attacks — hardly a good starting place for rearming Japan. As for Japan as an American ally — I believe the Japanese still feel more like an American conquest than our happy ally. For allies in the East, I far prefer South Korea. I feel much closer to the South Koreans than the Japanese and they come with none of Japan’s heavy baggage.
I recall signs in front of every temple I visited in Korea telling of the many times the temple had been rebuilt after it was burned by an invading Japanese army. I recently watched the Korean movie “the Admiral” and could not help but notice the strong feelings it stirred against the Japanese. Similarly, many recent Chinese movies dramatize the savagery of the Japanese Imperial Army in their occupation of China. Rearming the Japanese is like tearing open a hornet’s nest in a crowded room.
America’s post World War II diplomacy in the Orient, though possibly less brutal, has been handled with a level of wisdom approaching that of Japan’s diplomacy through military occupation. On more recent trips to Korea ~2006, I felt distinctly less popular as an American than I had in 1986. On a visit to the National Museum of Korea in Seoul I could not mistake the message offered by the giant window in the museum overlooking the American Eighth Army base in Yongsan [to be relocated outside Seoul in 2019]. The window looked right down on the Army golf course with the base in the distance. I also noticed the Eighth Army seemed to be located in a lot of the same buildings the Japanese occupied after they annexed Korea in 1910. We seem completely clueless to the meaning of such symbols. After invading Iraq we used many of the same building Saddam Hussein used including the infamous Abu Ghraib. Would it really be too expensive to tear down these buildings and rebuild?
Do Obama’s corporate masters really believe rearming Japan to help grease the TPP is a good deal? I believe it is strikingly bad diplomacy.
A primer, but a useful review and summary:
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/16/austerity_will_wreck_europe_greece_and_the_scary_new_european_ultra_nationalism/
Conclusion: economic privation leads to political extremism (duh), on a continent with an ugly political history.
So soon they forget.
Re: John Helmer on Ukraine/Russia. When a person is reporting factual information and cannot decode CBC as Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, I quit reading.
This is a single typo in a blog. You are seriously going to go batshit over him writing “Commission” rather than “Corporation”? That suggests a lack of a sense of proportion on your part. Please tell me how that error has any impact on any of the arguments his is making.
For what it’s worth:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/greece-bailout-revives-image-of-the-cruel-german/
On the same theme of “breaking the EU” – this is the PR and potentially political consequences for Germany. Some really nasty stuff circulating. In the long run, it’s going to matter that they’ve revived memories of WWII and the Nazi occupations.
Yves in previous articles had mentioned such EU threats coming Greece’s way:
During a pivotal meeting with Merkel, French President François Hollande and European Council President Donald Tusk, Tsipras at one point received a thinly veiled threat that if he walked away and left the euro, Greece risked going it alone geopolitically, too.
According to two officials in Brussels with knowledge of the exchange, the specter was raised of aggression from Turkey — a neighboring nation viewed in Greece as a historic antagonist.
Greek leader’s debt deal ignites revolt at home from austerity’s opponents
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/greece-agrees-to-a-punishing-ultimatum-from-european-leaders/2015/07/13/4b6c2f2a-28f3-11e5-960f-22c4ba982ed4_story.html
further to tomorrows anniversary
http://www.theage.com.au/world/mh17-plane-was-shot-down-by-a-buk-missile-russian-weapons-manufacturer-says-20150602-ghfdco.html
MH17 plane was shot down by a Buk missile, Russian weapons manufacturer says
From Kyiv-controlled territory, no less. Yet Eliot Higgins, who is still not wearing a clown suit, is wheeled out to prove that discredited Western propaganda leads only to the conclusion that the Russians done it.
You can have a lot of cruel fun with populations when you get them to believe that other people don’t have agendas extending beyond the contest at hand.
HD
Did you read the link?
optimader, graf 9… “The company also claimed it could prove the missile was shot from a region controlled by Kiev’s forces, not separatists. The Russian military has previously made similar claims.”
Higgins’ reasoning, on the other hand, is transparently motivated to find some way to hang it on the Rooskies and their “troll army”. It’s a Murdoch paper — such is to be expected.
That proves just about nothing since virtually all material in Ukraine was of Russian origin. Russia supplied the government before the coup so both sides are using Russian equipment (much of the rebel equipment is stuff they captured from government forces). Russia has also been careful to supply really old stuff to look as if it came from low end arms merchants.
It will be interesting to see the “final” report from the Netherlands circa October 2015. I have seen the pics of the damaged fuselage and, having significant experience in war zones, can attest that the holes look exactly like those caused by 50 caliber aircraft mounted guns. Certainly not from missile fragments. Also where is the voice transmission data from both cockpit and control tower? Satellite surveillance (whether US or NATO)? My bet is that the final report will claim “inconclusive evidence”. The Dutch have always been good little puppets.
Yes, old and recent links point to a Ukraine jet to shoot it down. Not a surface to air missile from so called “Separatists”. How TPTB are keeping the lid on this confounds me…
Since NC occasionally covers The Vatican and its finances, i thought some people here might find this article (and its comments) interesting: http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/under-new-system-vatican-budgets-show-previously-unreported-assets
Re: Uber fined $7.3 mil…betcha Travis Kalanick will treat his “Uberlawyers” as “independent contractors” who – having embraced the “sharing economy” bidness model as a defensive legal strategy – can bill Uber only at the rate of California’s hourly minimum wage…now, THAT’S sharing!
Another July 17th plane-crash anniversary: TWA Flight 800, which blew up over Long Island sound 19 years ago tomorrow. I had a friend on that one – R.I.P.