Posted by seumasach on April 24, 2016
22nd April, 2016
The day after the impeachment vote in the lower house of Brazil’s congress, one of the leaders of the effort, Senator Aloysio Nunes, traveled to Washington, D.C. He had scheduled meetings with a number of U.S. officials, including Thomas Shannon at the State Department.
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: Cunha's coup, Stop the coup in Brazil! | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on April 19, 2016
19th April, 2016
The “fix” is in.
In an effort to have greater access and control over the international gold market, China, the world’s biggest producer and consumer of gold, announced on Tuesday it launched its own benchmark, or “fix,” for the price of gold.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: The Shanghai Gold Exchange | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on April 19, 2016
Pepe Escobar
19th April, 2016
The gloomy and repulsive night when the female president of the 7th largest economy in the world was the prey of choice fed to a lynch mob of hyenas in a drab, provincial Circus Maximus will forever live in infamy.
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: impeachment crisis in Brazil, Stop the coup in Brazil! | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on April 19, 2016
A radicalização política e a intolerância chegaram hoje a um ponto perigoso. Não há mais debate, apenas bate-boca e gritaria. Neste cenário dominado pelas paixões, tudo pode acontecer, mesmo um sério conflito social.( Political radicalism and intolerance have today reached a dangerous point. There is no more debate, just a shouting match. In this scenario dominated by emotion anything can happen, even a serious social conflict)
Jose Murilo de Carvalho talking to the BBC
The report below which a friend sent me from Brazil gives a strong sense of the extremely disturbed atmosphere prevailing in Brazil.
RELATÓRIO DA ZUMBILÂNDIA – O DAY AFTER IMPEACHMENT
(Um brasileiro exilado no seu próprio país)
Gui Mallon
English translation at bottom
Estou escrevendo escondido no meu refúgio, em uma terra cada vez mais tomada por zumbis. O vírus vidiótico se espalha velozmente através de uma mosca azul hipnótica que faz “plim-plim”. Chama-se TV Globo. A única maneira de escapar do seu alcance é vestir a alma de vermelho. Mas com cuidado para não transparecer, porque os zumbis andam em grupos e se reconhecerem qualquer nuance desta cor, mesmo em cabelos ruivos, são capazes de atacar, gritando: FORA IGUALDADE !
FORA LEGALIDADE ! FORA FRATERNIDADE !
Temo principalmente pela minha família…
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: impeachment crisis in Brazil | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on April 19, 2016
‘Tudo pode acontecer, até um sério conflito social’
22nd March, 2016
Um dos mais conhecidos historiadores brasileiros, em especial pela publicação, em 1987, de Os Bestializados: O Rio de Janeiro e a República que Não Foi (livro que fez uma análise crítica sobre o processo de proclamação da República no Brasil), José Murilo de Carvalho oferece uma visão pessimista do atual momento político do país.
Use google to translate from Portuguese
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: impeachment crisis in Brazil | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on April 18, 2016
23rd November, 2016
China is afraid of a British exit from the European Union. Yu Jie (Cherry) claims that the historic Sino-British strategic partnership in the making is as much about money as it is about power, and hence its importance rests on the UK’s role in a united Europe. Beijing sees its cooperation with London as the foundation of a new world order where China plays a much greater role in international affairs.
Posted in Battle for Europe, British economy | Tagged: brexit, China-UK comprehensive strategic partnership | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on April 18, 2016
“The Chinese government, for its part, clearly sees its relationship with Britain as being a linchpin to its relationship with the West more broadly. During President Xi Jinping’s high-profile state visit last October, he announced a new set of large Chinese investments in the British economy. But as I wrote at the time, China was not so much looking for a European friend in London so much as a Western friend that could serve as a link to the United States and the rest of Europe.”
Brookings
17th March, 2016
As Britain prepares itself for the historic June 23 referendum on its membership of the European Union, an unexpected player has entered the debate: China. With Chinese businesses and the government now investing in big, lucrative projects in Britain, they’re clearly worried about the economic implications of Brexit. In recent weeks, Chinese officials and business leaders alike have become more vocal in their support for European unity (and, though they haven’t said it explicitly, for the “stay” campaign).
Posted in British economy | Tagged: brexit, China-UK comprehensive strategic partnership | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on April 5, 2016
Arch-Eurosceptic Evans-Pritchard seems to have lost his nerve on Brexit. That a”No” vote is a vote for disaster is increasingly clear. However, a “Yes” vote in itself will not resolve Britain’s deep-seated problems. We await a positive programme for the reconstruction of British society and economy so far absent from the debate.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Britain’s current account deficit is the worst ever recorded in peace-time since the Bank of England started collecting records in 1772 under the reign of George III.
Posted in Battle for Europe, UK economy | Tagged: brexit | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on April 5, 2016
The claimed US attack on the City is credible but not this conclusion:
“The biggest item on the British agenda is Brexit, and since the EU regulations on financial services are one of the biggest sticking points in the UK-EU negotiations, the revelations may make these negotiations so contentious as to strengthen the pro-Brexit lobby which will seek to escape EU’s scrutiny of London’s City.”
Without the “special relationship” there is little point in calling for Brexit since, at the same time as being excluded from Euro transactions and jeopardising the strategic partnership with China, the City would face takeover from Wall Street. This looks like lose/lose to me. Consolidating Oceania as a security block looks like an equally futile goal and would anyway be blown out of the water by a Trump victory. The British people left to their own devices may well vote for Brexit but look out for one or more “white swan” events to turn the tide in this campaign.
5th April, 2016
The “Panama Papers” affair has the unmistakable hallmarks of a net-centric hybrid war operation: a disparate group of apparently non-state actors, seemingly operating without central direction, carry out an information attack which just happens to dovetail nicely with US international policy objectives and not resulting in a black eye for any prominent US actors. Given the level of corruption of the US elite and the degree of offshoring engaged by US financial institutions, it seems all too fortuitous that the targeted firm did not do too much business with US clients, due to a variety of US laws which specific prohibit offshoring through Panamanian firms. It’s as if someone in the US decided to use Snowden’s act of civil disobedience and attempt to disguise a US information operation as a similar act by a civic-minded individual.
Posted in Battle for Europe | Tagged: brexit | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on April 5, 2016
Another “white swan ” event and yet another CIA sponsored putsch bites the dust. Will they even bother with a similar campaign aimed at Zuma?
4th April, 2016
Brazilian House Speaker Eduardo Cunha, who is leading a fierce attempt to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, has been implicated in the Panama Papers for receiving bribes linked to offshore companies involved in the country’s Petrobras state oil scandal, underlining the hypocrisy of the campaign against Rousseff in the noble name of rooting out corruption.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: operation lava jato | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on March 31, 2016
With a consensus emerging that the British steel industry is a strategic asset which must be saved and a leader of the opposition calling for a “strategic state” and a”national investment bank”, the post- thatcherite consensus on non-interventionism is breaking down. This is a very recent shift and a very sharp check on the opposite trend embodied in the Tory/SNP regionalisation of Britain project. Both centripetal and centrifugal forces are currently vying for primacy and yet it is clear that central control is necesarry to rebuild Britain’s industrial base.
Larry Elliot
30th March, 2016
As a share of its economy, Germany’s manufacturing sector is twice the size of Britain’s – 23% of national GDP, compared with 11%, according to the World Bank. Unlike Britain, it runs a large surplus on trade in goods. The German steel industry has not buckled under the pressure of dumping by China.
Posted in UK economy | Tagged: End Wars-Rebuild Britain! | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 