In These New Times

A new paradigm for a post-imperial world

Archive for July, 2008

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How the British security forces are helping a killer spy to rebuild his life

Posted by seumasach on July 14, 2008

“In addition, the FRU source said he believed there was little real will by the government to go down the path of seeking truth and reconciliation in Ulster because of what skeletons it would bring out of the cupboard”

History repeats itself: as after the Parnell enquiry in the 1880s, the extent of British intelligence penetration of Republican organisations is an embarrasment to both sides. This, presumably, is why the Bloody Sunday enquiry has not reported and, presumably, never will. 

Neil Mackay

Sunday Herald

14th July, 2008

 

MI5 HAS rebuilt the life of a “killer spy” who was the British Army’s highest- ranking double agent at the heart of the IRA, and a man implicated in dozens of murders.

Freddie Scappaticci was exposed by the Sunday Herald in May 2003 as the infamous double agent codenamed Stakeknife. The Sunday Herald has now uncovered how Scappaticci has made millions in a taxpayer-funded resettlement package which was put in place after his cover was blown.

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Let the Lawsuits Begin:Banks Brace for a Storm of Litigation

Posted by seumasach on July 14, 2008

 

Ellen Brown, July 13th, 2008

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/bracing-storm.php 

In an article in The San Francisco Chronicle in December 2007, attorney Sean Olender suggested that the real reason for the subprime bailout schemes being proposed by the U.S. Treasury Department was not to keep strapped borrowers in their homes so much as to stave off a spate of lawsuits against the banks.  The plan then on the table was an interest rate freeze on a limited number of subprime loans.  Olender wrote:

“The sole goal of the freeze is to prevent owners of mortgage-backed securities, many of them foreigners, from suing U.S. banks and forcing them to buy back worthless mortgage securities at face value – right now almost 10 times their market worth. The ticking time bomb in the U.S. banking system is not resetting subprime mortgage rates. The real problem is the contractual ability of investors in mortgage bonds to require banks to buy back the loans at face value if there was fraud in the origination process.

“. . . The catastrophic consequences of bond investors forcing originators to buy back loans at face value are beyond the current media discussion. The loans at issue dwarf the capital available at the largest U.S. banks combined, and investor lawsuits would raise stunning liability sufficient to cause even the largest U.S. banks to fail, resulting in massive taxpayer-funded bailouts of Fannie and Freddie, and even FDIC . . . .

“What would be prudent and logical is for the banks that sold this toxic waste to buy it back and for a lot of people to go to prison. If they knew about the fraud, they should have to buy the bonds back.”1

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Credit crunch: Emergency scheme to help cash-strapped homeowners

Posted by seumasach on July 13, 2008

 

When the government took over Northern Rock, they took on its liabilities but left its assets, its mortgage book. Now the company is milking that for all its worth to pay back government money. The idea of effectively nationalising the housing stock which can’t be bought, makes perfect sense. Since their value to the bank after reposession is often very low or even zero, this doesn’t have to be too expensive. The implications, however, are far reaching: why would people then struggle to pay mortgages if they had this option. It takes us in the direction of the complete nationalisation of housing stock.

Gaby Hinsliff and Jamie Elliott

The Observer

13th July, 2008

Homeowners struggling to meet their mortgage payments would be able to sell their homes to the local authority and rent them back as tenants under radical proposals being considered by the government to prevent the misery of repossession.

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Russia: The Hague tribunal should be scrapped

Posted by seumasach on July 13, 2008

Russia Today

10th July, 2008

The Russian Foreign Ministry has accused the International Criminal Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia of being biased and said it should be dismantled as soon as possible. This follows the acquittal of Bosnian Naser Oric last week.

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IndyMac Bank seized by federal regulators

Posted by smeddum on July 13, 2008

IndyMac Bank seized by federal regulators

Annie Wells / Los Angeles Times
IndyMac Bank customers in Pasadena encounter notices that the FDIC has closed the bank.
The Pasadena-based thrift’s failure is the second-biggest by a U.S. bank. Doors will reopen Monday.
By Kathy M. Kristof and Andrea Chang, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
July 12, 2008

The federal government took control of Pasadena-based IndyMac Bank on Friday in what regulators called the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

‘Dodgy Dossier’ on Zimbabwe crushed

Posted by smeddum on July 13, 2008

‘Dodgy Dossier’ on Zimbabwe crushed

Philip Murombedzi

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:22:00 +0000 Zimbabwe Guardian

WHAT exactly is happening to the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown? In June he suffered a humiliation local election defeat which left his party with one of the worst election outcomes in decades. Then came the Mayor of London election which Labour candidate Ken Livingstone dismally lost to ‘cartoon character’ Boris Johnson. Yesterday his ‘dodgy sanctions dossier’ calling for sanctions on Zimbabwe was crushed by Russia and China. Read the rest of this entry »

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Britain: The significance of the Haltemprice and Howden by-election

Posted by seumasach on July 13, 2008

 

 

Here is a useful and informative report on the by-election which was generally ignored.

WSWS

By Chris Marsden
12 July, 2008

What is the political significance of the Haltemprice and Howden by-election?

Former Conservative Shadow Home Secretary David Davis forced the election by resigning as an MP. He did so with the stated intention of demonstrating the degree of popular opposition to Labour’s anti-terror legislation, which extends the period of detention without charge to 42-days. Moreover, he linked this to broader opposition to the erosion of civil liberties.

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A Labour MP who infuriated Downing Street by meeting a Russian spy for tea in the Commons has been praised by the Kremlin for attacking MI5.

Posted by seumasach on July 13, 2008

 

Whitehall watchers will be seeing all this as evidence of emerging fissures in the monolithic face of British establishment power,part of which, at least ,has the sense to see that the now fragile glass house of UK PLC is not the place to start a campaign of stone-throwing against all and sundry. Dissidents, however, are not tolerated in our great democracy. See Craig Murray’s blog for more on the campaign against MacKinlay.

Mail on Sunday

12th July 2008

A Labour MP who infuriated Downing Street by meeting a Russian spy for tea in the Commons has been praised by the Kremlin for attacking MI5.

Andrew MacKinlay – who was carpeted by Labour Chief Whip Geoff Hoon for his meetings with Alexander Polyakov – is calling for British security services to be ‘brought under control’ for claiming there are too many Russian spies in the UK.

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Intervene? Haven’t Britain and America already done enough damage?

Posted by seumasach on July 13, 2008

 

Here, rather surprisingly, is an organisation of the British Left which reveals the reality of Britian’s war on Zimbabwe and takes a stand in defence of Zimbabwean sovereignty.

Workers

July 2008 Issue

In all the coverage of Zimbabwe, it is rarely noted that the US and British states have been imposing punitive economic sanctions on the country since 2001. Western academics and journalists instead portray the crisis in Zimbabwe solely as the result of the land reform or of Mugabe’s mismanagement.

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U.S., Iraq scale down negotiations over forces

Posted by seumasach on July 13, 2008

 

Any long-term deal on extended presence will wait for next administration

Karen DeYoung

MSNBC

13th July, 2008

 

U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have abandoned efforts to conclude a comprehensive agreement governing the long-term status of U.S troops in Iraq before the end of the Bush presidency, according to senior U.S. officials, effectively leaving talks over an extended U.S. military presence there to the next administration.

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Danish Bank in `Northern Rock’ Crisis; 30 Others Being Watched

Posted by smeddum on July 13, 2008

Press Release   EIR

COPENHAGEN, July 11, 2008 (EIRNS) — For only the second time since World War II, the Danish National Bank has had to extend an extraordinary credit line to a commercial bank, this time to the medium-sized regional Roskilde Bank, one of the ten largest banks in Denmark. The credit line is for 1 million euros, for a period of six months. According to financial insiders, this is the opening shot of a financial crisis which will have a deeper and broader impact on the Denmark’s national economy, than Northern Rock did in Great Britain. Read the rest of this entry »

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